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HORACE MANN, LL.D 



By If E X R Y 1! A R XAR1>. 



[Reprinted from Barnard's American Journal of Bilucutiun I'ur December 



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HORACE MANN, LL.D 

By HENRY BARNARD. 

[Reprinted from Barnard's American Journal of Education for December, 1858.] 



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L HOKACE MANN.* 



Horace Mann, the first Secretary of the Board of Education for 
the State of Massachusetts, and President of Antioch College, at Yel- 
low Springs, Ohio, was born in the town of Franklin, Norfolk County, 
Mass., May 4, 1796. His father, Mr. Thomas Mann, supported his 
family by cultivating a small farm. He died when the subject of this 
memoir was thirteen years of age, leaving him little besides the ex- 
ample of an upright life, virtuous inculcations, and hereditary thirst 
for knowledge. 

The narrow circumstances of the father limited the educational 
advantages of his children. They were taught in the district common 
school ; and it was the misfortune of the family that it belonged to 
the smallest district, had the poorest school-house, and employed the 
cheapest teachers, in a town which was itself both small and poor. 

His father was a man of feeble health, and died of consumption. 
Horace inherited weak lungs, and from the age of twenty to thirty 
years he just skirted the fatal shores of that disease on which his 
father had been wrecked. This inherited weakness, accompanied by 
a high nervous temperament, and aggravated by a want of judicious 
physical training in early life, gave him a sensitiveness of organization 
and a keenness of susceptibility, which nothing but the iron clamps 
of habitual self-restraint could ever have controlled. 

His mother, whose maiden name was Stanley, was a woman of 
superior intellect and character. In her mind, the flash of intuition 
superseded the slow processes of ratiocination. Results always ratified 
her predictions. She was a true mother. On her list of duties and 
of pleasure her children stood first, the world and herself afterward. 
She was able to impart but little of the details of knowledge ; but she 
did a greater work than this, by imparting the principles by which 
all knowledge should be guided. 

Mr. Mann's early life was spent in a rural district, in an obscure 

county town, without the appliance of excitements or opportunity for 

display. In a letter before us, written long ago to a friend, he says : — 

I regard it as an irretrievable misfortune that my childhood was not a happy 
one. By nature I was exceedingly elastic and buoyant, but the poverty of my 

* This Memoir is abridged in part from an article in Livingston's "Law Journal,' which 
also appeared in Livingston's " Eminent Americans." 



(312 HORA.CE MANN 

parents subjected me to continual privations. I believe in the rugged nursing of 
Toil, but she nursed me too much. In the winter time, I was employed in in-door 
and sedentary occupations, which confined me too strictly; and in summer, when 
I could work on the farm, the labor was too severe, and often encroached upon 
the hours of sleep. I do not remember the time when I began to work. Even 
my play-days, — not play-days, for I never had any, — but my play-hours were 
earned by extra exertion, finishing tasks early to gain a little leisure for boyish 
sports. My parents sinned ignorantly, but God affixes the same physical penal- 
ties to the violation of His laws, whether that violation be willful or ignorant. For 
willful violation, there is the added penalty of remorse, and that is the only differ- 
ence. Here let me give you two pieces of advice, which shall be gratis to you, 
though they cost me what is of more value than diamonds. Train your children 
to work, though not too hard ; and, unless they are grossly lymphatic, let them 
sleep as much as they will. I have derived one compensation, however, from the 
rigor of my early lot. Industry, or diligence, became my second nature, and I 
think it would puzzle any psychologist to tell where it joined on to the first. 
Owing to these ingrained habits, work has always been to me what water is to a 
fish. I have wondered a thousand times to hear people say, (i I don't like this 
business ;" or, " I wish I could exchange for that ;" for with me, whenever I have 
had any thing to do, I do not remember ever to have demurred, but have always 
set about it like a fatalist ; and it was as sure to be done as the sun is to set. 

What was called the love of knowledge was, in my time, necessarily cramped 
into a love of books ; because there was no such thing as oral instruction. Books 
designed for children were few, and their contents meager and miserable. My 
teachers were very good people but they were very poor teachers. Looking 
back to the school-boy days of my mates and myself, I can not adopt the line of 
Virgil, 

" O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint." 

I deny the bona. With the infinite universe around us, all ready to be daguerreo- 
typed upon our souls, we were never placed at the right focus to receive its glori- 
ous images. I had an intense natural love of beauty, and of its expression in 
nature and in the fine arts. As " a poet was in Murray lost," so at least an 
amateur poet, if not an artist, was lost in me. How often, when a boy, did I stop, 
like Akencide's hind, to gaze at the glorious sunset; and lie down upon my back, 
at night, on the earth, to look at the heavens. Yet with all our senses and our 
faculties glowing and receptive, how little were we taught ; or rather, how much 
obstruction was thrust between us and nature's teachings. Our eyes were never 
trained to distinguish forms or colors. Our ears were strangers to music. So far 
from being taught the art of drawing, which is a beautiful language by itself, I 
well remember that when the impulse to express in pictures what I could not 
express in words was so strong that, as Cowper says, it tingled down to my fingers, 
then my knuckles were rapped with the heavy ruler of the teacher, or cut with 
his rod, so that an artificial tingling soon drove away the natural. Such youthful 
buoyancy as even severity could not repress was our only dancing-master. Of 
all our faculties, the memory for words was the only one specially appealed to. 
The most comprehensive generalizations of men were given us, instead of the facts 
from which those generalizations were formed. All ideas outside of the book 
were contraband articles, which the teacher confiscated, or rather flung over- 
board. Oh, when the intense and burning activity of youthful faculties shall find 
employment in salutary and pleasing studies or occupations, then will parents be 
able to judge better of the alledged proneness of children to mischief. Until then, 
children have not a fair trial before their judges. 

Yet, with these obstructions, I had a love of knowledge which 'nothing could 
repress. An inward voice raised its plaint for ever in my heart for something 
nobler and better. And if my parents had not the means to give me knowledge, 
they intensified the love of it. They always spoke of learning and learned men 
with enthusiasm and a kind of reverence. I was taught to take care of the few 
books we had, as though there was something sacred about them. I never dog's- 
eared one in my life, nor profanely scribbled upon title pages, margin, or fly-leaf, 
and would as soon have stuck a pin through my flesh as through the pages of a 
book. When very young, I remember a young lady came to our house on a visit, 



HORACE MANN. Qi 3 

who was said to have studied Latin. I looked upon lier as a sort of goddess. 
Years after, the idea that I could ever study Latin broke upon my mind with the 
wonder and bewilderment of a revelation. Until the age of fifteen I had never 
been to school more than eight or ten weeks in a year. 

I said we had but few books. The town, however, owned a small library. 
When incorporated, it was named after Dr. Franklin, whose reputation was then 
not only at its zenith, but, like the sun over Gibeon, was standing still there. As 
an acknowledgment of the compliment, he offered them a bell for their church, 
but afterward, saying that, from what he had learned of the character of the people, 
he thought they would prefer sense to sound, he changed the gift into a library. 
Though this library consisted of old histories and theologies, suited perhaps to the 
" conscript fathers " of the town, but miserably adapted to the " prescript " children, 
yet I wasted my youthful ardor upon its martial pages, and learned to glory in 
war, which both reason and conscience have since taught me to consider almost 
universally a crime. Oh, when will men learn to redeem that childhood in their 
offspring which was lost to themselves ! We watch for the seed-time for our 
fields and improve it, but neglect the mind until midsummer or even autumn 
comes, when all the actinism of the vernal sun of youth is gone. I have endeav- 
ored to do something to remedy this criminal defect. Had I the power, I would 
scatter libraries over the whole land, as the sower sows his wheat field. 

More than by toil, or by the privation of any natural taste, was the inward joy 
of my youth blighted by theological inculcations. The pastor of the .church in 
Franklin was the somewhat celebrated Dr. Emmons, who not only preached to 
his people, but ruled them for more than fifty years. lie was an extra or hyper- 
Calvinist — a man of pure intellect, whose logic was never softened in its severity 
by the infusion of any kindliness of sentiment. He expounded all the doctrines 
of total depravity, election, and reprobation, and not only the eternity but the 
extremity of hell torments, unflinchingly and in their most terrible significance, 
while he rarely if ever descanted upon the joys of heaven, and never, to my recol- 
lection, upon the essential and necessary happiness of a virtuous life. Going to 
church on Sunday was a sort of religious ordinance in our family, and during all 
my boyhood I hardly ever remember of staying at home. 

As to my early habits, whatever may have been my shortcomings, I can still 
say that I have always been exempt from what may be called common vices. I 
was never intoxicated in my life — unless, perchance, with joy or anger. I never 
swore — indeed profanity was always most disgusting and repulsive to me. And 
(I consider it always a climax,) I never used the " vile weed " in any form. I 
early formed the resolution to be a slave to no habit. For the rest, my public 
life is almost as well known to others as to myself; and, as it commonly happens 
to public men, others know my motives a great deal better than I do. 

Mr. Mann's father having died when he was thirteen years of age, 
he remained with his mother on the homestead until he was twenty. 
But an irrepressible yearning for knowledge still held possession of 
him. "I know not how it was," said he to a friend in after life, "its 
motive never took the form of wealth or fame. It was rather an 
instinct which impelled toward knowledge, as that of migratory birds 
impels them northward in spring time. All my boyish castles in the 
air had reference to do something for the benefit of mankind. The 
early precepts of benevolence, inculcated upon me by my parents, 
flowed out in this direction ; and I had a conviction that knowledge 
was my needed instrument." 

A fortunate accident gave opportunity and development to this 
passion. An itinerant schoolmaster, named Samuel Barrett, came 
into his neighborhood and opened a school. This man was eccentric 
and abnormal, both in appetites and faculties. He would teach a 



614 HORACE MANN. 

school for six months, tasting nothing stronger than tea, though in 
this Dr. Johnson was a model of temperance compared with him, and 
then for another six months, more or less, he would travel the country 
in a state of beastly drunkenness, begging cider, or any thing 
that would intoxicate, from house to house, and sleeping in barns 
and styes, until the paroxysm had passed by. Then he would 
be found clothed, and sitting in his right mind, and obtain another 
school. 

Mr. Barrett's speciality was English grammar, and Greek, and Latin. 
In the dead languages, as far as he pretended to know any thing, he 
seemed to know every thing. All his knowledge, too, was committed 
to memory. In hearing recitations from Virgil, Cicero, the Greek 
Testament, and other classical works, then usually studied as a pre- 
paration for college, he never took a book into his hand. Not the 
sentiments only, but the sentences, in the transposed order of their 
words, were as familiar to him as his A, B, C, and he would as soon 
have missed a letter out of the alphabet, as article or particle out of 
the lesson. This learned Mr. Barrett was learned in languages alone. 
In arithmetic he was an idiot. He never could commit the multipli- 
cation table to memory, and did not know enough to date a letter or 
tell the time of day by the clock. 

In this chance school Mr. Mann first saw a Latin grammar ; but it 
was the veni, vidi, vici of Csesar. Having obtained a reluctant con- 
sent from his guardian to prepare for college, with six months of 
schooling he learned his grammar, read Corderius, ^Esop's Fables, the 
JEneid, with parts of the Georgics and Bucolics, Cicero's Select Ora- 
tions, the Four Gospels, and part of the Epistles in Greek, part of the 
Grseca Majora and Minora, and entered the Sophomore class of Brown 
University, Providence, in September, 1816. 

Illness compelled him to leave his class for a short period ; and 
again he was absent in the winter to keep school as a resource for 
paying college bills. Yet, when his class graduated in 1819, the first 
part or "Honor" in the comencement exercises was awarded to him, 
with the unanimous approval of Faculty and classmates. The theme 
of his oration on graduating foreshadowed the history of his life. It 
was on the Progressive Character of the Human Race. With youth- 
ful enthusiasm, he portrayed that higher condition of human society 
when education shall develop the people into loftier proportions of 
wisdom and virtue, when philanthropy shall succor the wants and re- 
lieve the woes of the race, and when free institutions shall abolish 
that oppression and war which have hitherto debarred nations from 
ascending into realms of grandeur and happiness. 



HORACE MANN. 615 

Immediately after commencement (indeed some six weeks before, 
and immediately after the final examination of his class, so that no 
time might be lost ; for the law then required three years' reading in 
a lawyer's office, or rather three years to be spent in a lawyer's office 
without any reference to reading,) he entered his name in the office 
of the Hon. J. J. Fiske, of Wrentham, as a student at law. He had 
spent here, however, only a few months when he was invited back to 
college as a tutor in Latin and Greek. This proposal he was induced 
to accept for two reasons : first, it would lighten his burden of indebt- 
edness (for he was living on borrowed money ;) and, second, it would 
afford the opportunity he so much desired of revising and extending 
his classical studies. 

He now devoted himself most assiduously to Latin and Greek, and 
the instructions given to his class were characterized by two peculiari- 
ties, whose value all will admit, though so few have realized. In 
addition to rendering the sense of the author, and a knowledge of 
syntactical rules, he always demanded a translation in the most ele- 
gant, choice, and euphonious language. He taught his Latin classes 
to look through the whole list of synonyms given in the Latin-Eng- 
lish dictionary, and to select from among them all the one which 
would convey the author's idea, in the most expressive, graphic, and 
elegant manner ; rendering military terms by military terms, nautical 
by nautical, the language of rulers in language of majesty and com- 
mand, of suppliants by words of entreaty, and so forth. This method 
improves diction surprisingly. The student can almost feel his organ 
of language grow under its training ; at any rate, he can see from 
month to month that it has grown. The other particular referred to, 
consisted in elucidating the text by geographical, biographical, and 
historical references ; thus opening the mind of the student to a vast 
fund of collateral knowledge, and making use of the great mental 
law, that it is easier to remember two or even ten associated ideas 
than either of them alone. 

Though liberal in granting indulgences to his class, yet he was in- 
exorable in demanding correct recitations. However much priva- 
tion or pain the getting of the lesson might cost, yet it was generally 
got as the lesser evil. One day a student asked the steward of the 
college what he was going to do with some medicinal preparation he 
had. " Mr. So and So," said the steward, " has a violent attack of 
fever, and I am going to give him a sweat." "If you want to give 
him a sweat," said the inquirer, "send him into our recitation room 
without his lesson." 

While in college, Mr. Mann had excelled in scientific studies. He 



QIQ HORACE MANN. 

now had an opportunity to improve himself in classical culture. A 
comparison of the two convinced him how infinitely inferior in value, 
not only as an attainment, but as a means of mental discipline, is 
heathen mythology to modern science ; the former consisting of the 
imaginations of man, the latter of the handiwork of God. 

In the latter part of 1821, having resigned his tutorship, he entered 
the law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, then at the zenith of its 
reputation, under the late Judge Gould. Here he remained rather 
more than a year, devoting himself with great assiduity to the study 
of the law under that distinguished jurist. Leaving Litchfield, he 
entered the office of the Hon. James Richardson, of Dedham, was ad- 
mitted a member of the Norfolk bar, in December, 1823, and imme- 
diately opened an office in Dedham. 

We believe the records of the courts will show that, during the 
fourteen years of his forensic practice, he gained at least four out of 
five of all the contested cases in which he was engaged. The inflexi- 
ble rule of his professional life was, never to undertake a case that he 
did not believe to be right. He held that an advocate loses his high- 
est power when he loses the ever-conscious conviction that he is con- 
tending for the truth ; that though the fees or fame may be a stimu- 
lus, yet that a conviction of being right is itself creative of power, and 
renders its possessor more than a match for antagonists otherwise 
greatly his superior. 

In 1827, Mr. Mann was elected to the Massachusetts House of 
Representatives, for the town of Dedham, and continued to be returned 
until the year 1833, when he removed to Boston, and entered into a 
partnership with Edward G. Loring. At the first election after his 
becoming a citizen of Boston, he was chosen to the State Senate for 
the county of Suffolk, which post he was returned to for the four 
succeeding elections. In 1836 that body elected him its president, 
and again in 1837, in which year he retired from political life to 
enter upon the duties of Secretary of the Board of Education. Dur- 
ing his legislative course Mr. Mann took an active part in the discus- 
sion of all important questions, especially of such as pertained to 
railroads, public charities, religious liberty, suppression of traffic in 
lottery tickets, and spirituous liquors, and to education. 

He advocated laws for improving the system of common schools. 
He, more than any other man, was the means of procuring the enact- 
ment of what was called the " Fifteen Gallon Law," for the suppression 
of intemperance in Massachusetts. He was a member of the com- 
mittee who reported the resolves which subsequently resulted in the 
codification of the statute laws of Massachusetts. He took a leading 



HORACE MANN. 617 

part in preparing and carrying through the law whose stringent pro- 
visions for a long time, and almost effectually, broke up the traffic in 
lottery tickets. 

But the act by which Mr. Mann most signalized his legislative life 
in the House of Representatives was the establishment of the State 
Lunatic Hospital of Worcester. This benevolent enterprise was con- 
ceived, sustained, and carried through the House by him alone, against 
the apathy and indifference of many, and the direct opposition of 
some prominent men. He moved the appointment of the original 
committee of inquiry, and made its report, drew up and reported the 
resolve for erecting the hospital, and his was the only speech made in 
its favor. After the law was passed, he was appointed chairman of 
the Board of Commissioners to contract for and superintend the erec- 
tion of the Hospital. When the buildings were completed, in 1833, 
he was appointed chairman of the Board of Trustees for administering 
the institution, and remained on the Board until rotated out of office 
by the provisions of the law which governed it. 

We subjoin a sketch of Mr. Mann's speech in behalf of the resolve 
for establishing the Hospital : — 

Mr. Mann, of Dedham, requested the attention of the House to the numbers, 
condition, and necessities of the insane within this commonwealth, and to the 
consideration of the means by which their sufferings might be altogether prevented, 
or at least assuaged. On reviewing our legislation upon this subject, he could 
not claim for it the praise either of policy or humanity. In 1816 it was made the 
duty of the Supreme Court, when a grand jury had refused to indict, or the jury 
of trials to convict such person, by reason of his insanity or mental derangement, 
to commit any person to prison, there to be kept until his enlargement should be 
deemed compatible with the safety of the citizens, or until some friend should 
procure his release by becoming responsible for all damages which, in his insanity, 
he might commit. 

Had the human mind been tasked to devise a mode of aggravating to the ut- 
most the calamities of the insane, a more apt expedient could scarcely have been 
suggested ; or, had the earth been searched, places more inauspicious to their 
recovery could scarcely have been found. 

He cast no reflection upon the keepers of our jails, houses of correction, and 
poor houses, as humane men, when he said that, as a class, they were eminently 
disqualified to have the supervision and management of the insane. The superin- 
tendent of the insane should not only be a humane man, but a man of science ; 
he should not only be a physician, but a mental philosopher. An alienated mind 
should be touched only by a skillful hand. Great experience and knowledge were 
necessary to trace the causes that first sent it devious into the wilds of insanity, 
to counteract the disturbing forces, to restore it again to harmonious action. None 
of all these requisites could we command under the present system. 

But the place-was no less unsuitable than the management. In a prison little 
attention could be bestowed upon the bodily comforts and less upon the mental condi- 
tion of the insane. They are shut out from the cheering and healing influences of 
the external world. They are cut off from the kind regard of society and friends. 
The construction of their cells often debars them from light and air. With fire 
they can not be trusted. Madness strips them of their clothing. If there be any 
recuperative energies of mind, suffering suspends or destroys them, and recovery 
is placed almost beyond the reach of hope. He affirmed that he was not giving 
an exaggerated account of this wretched class of beings, between whom and 
humanity there seemed to be a gulf, which no one had as yet crossed to carry them 



618 HORACE MANN. 

relief. He held in his hand the evidence which would sustain all that he had 
said. * * 

From several facts and considerations, he inferred that the whole number of 
insane persons in the State could not be less than 500. Whether 500 of our 
fellow-beings, suffering under the bereavement of reason, should be longer sub- 
jected to the cruel operation of our laws, was a question which no man could 
answer in the affirmative, who was not himself a sufferer under the bereavement 
of all generous and humane emotions. But he would for a moment consider it as 
a mere question of saving and expenditure. He would argue it as if human 
nature knew no sympathies, as if duty imposed no obligations. And, in teaching 
Avarice a lesson of humanity, he would teach it a lesson of economy also. 

Of the 298 persons returned, 161 are in confinement. Of these, the duration 
of the confinement of 150 is ascertained. It exceeds in the aggregate a thousand 
years ; — a thousand years, during which the mind had been sequestered from the 
ways of knowledge and usefulness, and the heart in all its sufferings inaccessible 
to the consolations of religion. * * 

The average expense, Mr. Mann said, of keeping those persons in confinement 
could not be less than $2.50 per week, or if friends had furnished cheaper support, 
it must have been from some motive besides cupidity. Such a length of time, at 
such a price, would amount to $130,000. And if 150 who were in confinement 
exhibit an aggregate of more than a thousand years of insanity, the 148 at large 
might be safely set down at half that sum, or 500 years. Allowing for these an 
average expense of $1 per week, the sum is $52,000, which added to $130,000 
as above, makes $182,000. Should we add to this $1 per week for all, as the 
sum they might have earned had they been in health, the result is $234,000 lost 
to the State by the infliction of this malady alone ; and this estimate is predicated 
only of 298 persons, returned from less than half the population of the State. 

Taking results then, derived from so large an experience, it was not too much 
to say, that more than one-half of the cases of insanity were susceptible of cure, 
and that at least one-half of the expense now sustained by the State might be 
saved by the adoption of a different system of treatment. One fact ought not to 
be omitted, that those who suffer under the most sudden and violent access of in- 
sanity were most easily restored. But such individuals, under our system, are 
immediately subject to all the rigors of confinement, and thus an impassable barrier 
is placed between them and hope. This malady, too, is confined to adults almost 
exclusively. It is then, after all the expense of early education and rearing has 
been incurred, that their usefulness is terminated. But it had pained him to 
dwell so long on these pecuniary details. On this subject he was willing that his 
feelings should dictate to his judgment and control his interest. There are ques- 
tions, said he, upon which the heart is a better counselor than the head, — where 
its plain expositions of right encounter and dispel the sophistries of the intellect. 
There are sufferers amongst us whom we are able to relieve. If, with our abund- 
ant means, we hesitate to succor their distress, we may well envy them their 
incapacity to commit crime. * * 

But let us reflect, that while we delay they suffer. Another year not only gives 
an accession to their numbers, but removes, perhaps to a returnless distance, the 
chance of their recovery. Whatever they endure, which we can prevent, is 
virtually inflicted by our own hands. Let us restore them to the enjoyment of 
the exalted capacities of intellect and virtue. Let us draw aside the dark curtain 
which hides from their eyes the wisdom and beauty of the universe. The appro- 
priation proposed was small — it was for such a charity insignificant. Who is there, 
he demanded, that, beholding all this remediable misery on one hand, and looking, 
on the other, to that paltry sum which would constitute his proportion of the ex- 
pense, could pocket the money, and leave the victims to their sufferings? How 
many thousands do we devote annually to the cultivation of mind in our schools 
and colleges; and shall we do nothing to reclaim that mind when it has been lost 
to all its noblest prerogatives? Could the victims of insanity themselves come up 
before us, and find a language to reveal their history, who could hear them un- 
moved ? But to me, said Mr. Mann, the appeal is stronger, because they are 
unable to make it. Over his feelings, their imbecility assumed the form of irre- 
sistible power. No eloquence could persuade like their heedless silence. It is 
now, said he, in the power of the members of this House to exercise their highest 



HORACE MANN. 



G19 



privileges as men, their most enviable functions as legislators ; to become protectors 
to the wretched, and benefactors to the miserable." 

The execution of this great work illustrated those characteristics of 
the subject of this memoir which have signalized his life. The novelty 
and costliness of the enterprise demanded boldness. Its motive 
sprung from his benevolence. Its completion without loss or failure 
illustrated his foresight. It was arranged that no ardent spirits should 
ever be used on the work, and the whole edifice was completed with- 
out accident or injury to any workman. The expenditure of so large 
a sum as fifty thousand dollars without overrunning appropriations 
proved his recognition of accountability. The selection of so remark- 
able a man as Dr. Woodward for the superintendent, showed his 
knowledge of character. And the success which, after twenty years 
of experience, has finally crowned the work, denotes that highest kind 
of statesmanship, which holds the succor of human wants and the 
alleviation of human woes to be an integral and indispensable, as it is 
a most economical part of the duties of a paternal government. That 
Hospital has served as a model for many similar institutions in other 
states and countries, which, through the benevolent influence of its 
widely-known success, have been erected because that was erected. 

In 1835, Mr. Mann was a member, on the part of the Senate, of a 
legislative committee to whom was intrusted the codification of the 
statute law of Massachusetts, and after its adoption he was associated 
with Judge Metcalf in editing the same for the press. 

On the organization of the Board of Education for Massachusetts, 
on the 29th of June, 183V, Mr. Mann was elected its secretary, and 
entered forthwith on a new and more congenial sphere of labor. 
From the earliest day when his actions became publicly noticeable, 
universal education, through the instrumentality of free public schools, 
was commended by his word, and promoted by his acts. Its advocacy 
was a golden thread woven into all the texture of his writings and 
his life. One of his earliest addresses was a discourse before a county 
association of teachers. As soon as eligible, he was chosen a member 
of the Superintending School Committee of Dedham, and continued 
to fill the office until he left the place. In the General Court his 
voice and his vote were always on the side of schools. 

Mr. Mann withdrew from all other professional and business engage- 
ments whatever, that no vocation but the new one might burden his 
hands or obtrude upon his contemplations. He transferred his law 
business then pending, declined re-election to the Senate, and — the 
only thing that caused him a regret — resigned his offices and his act- 
ive connection with the different temperance organizations. He 



620 HORACE MANN. 

abstracted himself entirely from political parties, and for twelve years 
never attended a political caucus or convention of any kind. He 
resolved to be seen and known only as an educationist. Though 
sympathizing as much as ever with the reforms of the day, he knew 
how fatally obnoxious they were to whole classes of people whom he 
wished to influence for good ; and as he could not do all things at once, 
he sought to do the best things, and those which lay in the immediate 
path of his duty, first. Men's minds, too, at that time were so fired 
with partisan zeal on various subjects, that great jealousy existed lest 
the interest of some other cause should be subserved under the guise 
of a regard for education. Nor could vulgar and bigoted persons 
comprehend why a man should drop from an honorable and exalted 
station into comparative obscurity, and from a handsome income to a 
mere subsistence, unless actuated by some vulgar and bigoted motive 
like their own.* Subsequent events proved the wisdom of his course. 
The Board was soon assailed with violence by political partisans, by 
anti-temperance demagogues, and other bigots after their kind, and 
nothing but the impossibility of fastening any purpose upon its secre- 
tary save absolute devotion to his duty saved it from wreck. During 
a twelve years' period of service, no opponent of the cause, or of Mr. 
Mann's views in conducting it, was ever able to specify a single in- 
stance in which he had prostituted or perverted the influence of his 
office for any personal, partisan, or collateral end whatever. 

It is obvious, on a moment's reflection, that few works ever under- 
taken by man had relations so numerous, or touched society at so 
many points, and those so sensitive, as that in which Mr. Mann was 
now engaged. The various religious denominations were all turned 
into eyes, each to watch against encroachments upon itself, or favorit- 
ism toward others. Sordid men anticipated the expenditures incident 

* Dr. William E. Charming was the only man, among his friends and acquaintances, who 
did not dissuade him from accepting the office. He wrote to him as follows : — 

My Dear Sir : — I understand that you have given yourself to the cause of education in our 
commonwealth. I rejoice in it. Nothing could give me greater pleasure. 1 have lone; desired 
that some one uniting all your qualifications should devote himself to this work. You could 
not find a nobler station. Government has no nobler one to give. You must allow me to 
labor under you according to my opportunities. If at any time I can aid you, you must let 
me know, and I shall be glad to converse with you always about your operations. When 
will the low. degrading party quarrels of the country cease, and the better minds come to 
think what can be done toward a substantial, generous improvement of the community'? 
"My ear is pained, my very soul is sick " with the monotonous yet furious clamors about 
currency, banks, <fcc, when the spiritual interests of the community seem hardly to be recog- 
nized as having any reality. 

If we can but turn the wonderful energy of this people into a right channel, what a new 
heaven and earth must be realized among us I And I do not despair. Your willingness to 
consecrate yourself to the work is a happy omen. You do not stand alone, or form a rare 
exception to the times. There must be many to be touched by the same truths which are 
stirring vou. 

My hope is that the pursuit will give you new vigor and health. If you can keep strong 
outwardly, I have no fear about the efficiency of the spirit. I write in haste, for I am not 
very strong, and any effort exhausts me. but I wanted to express my sympathy, and to wish 
you God speed on your way. 

Your sincere friend, Wm. E. Channing. 



HORACE MANN. goj 

to improvement. Many teachers of private schools foresaw that any 
change for the better in the public schools would withdraw patronage 
from their own ; though to their honor it must be said that the cause 
of public education had no better friends than many private teachers 
proved themselves to be. But hundreds and hundreds of wretchedly 
poor aud incompetent teachers knew full well that the daylight of 
educational intelligence would be to them what the morning dawn is 
to night-birds. Bookmakers and booksellers were jealous of inter- 
ference in behalf of rivals ; and where there were twenty competitors 
of a kind, Hope was but a fraction of one-twentieth, while Fear was 
a unit. Mr. Mann for many years bad filled important political offices ; 
and, if political opponents could not find any thing wrong in what he 
was doing, it was the easiest of all things to foresee something wrong 
that he would do. Many persons who have some conscience in their 
statements about the past, have none in their predictions about the 
future. And however different and contradictory might be the mo- 
tives of opposition, all opponents would coalesce ; while the friends 
of the enterprise, though animated by a common desire for its ad- 
vancement, were often alienated from each other through disagree- 
ment as to methods. There was also the spirit of conservatism to be 
overcome ; and, more formidable by far than this, the spirit of pride 
on the part of some in the then existing condition of the schools,— a 
pride which had been fostered for a century among the people, not 
because their school system was as good as it should and might be, 
but because it was so much better than that of neighboring communi- 
ties. And, besides all this, it was impossible to excite any such en- 
thusiasm, for a cause whose highest rewards lie in the remote future, 
as for one where the investment of means or effort is to be refunded, 
with heavy usury, at the next anniversary or quarter-day. Then 
questions respecting the education of a whole people touched the 
whole people. Politics, commerce, manufactures, agriculture, are 
class interests. Each one is but a segment of the great social circle. 
While the few engaged in a single pursuit may be intensely excited, 
the great majority around may be in a state of quiescence or indiffer- 
ence. But, so far as education is regarded at all, it is a problem 
which every body undertakes to solve ; and hence ten thousand censors 
rise up in a day. It is an object not too low to be noticed by the 
highest, nor to high to be adjudicated upon by the lowest. Do not 
these considerations show the multifarious relations of the cause to 
the community at large, and to the interests and hopes of each of its 
classes ? And now consider the things indispensable to be done, to 
superinduce a vigorous system upon a decrepit one, — changes in the 



622 HORACE MANN. 

law, new organizations of territory into districts, the building of school- 
houses, classification of scholars, supervision of schools, improvements 
in books, in methods of teaching, and in the motives and ways of 
discipline, qualifications of teachers, the collection of statistics, the 
necessary exposure of defects and of mal-administration, &c, &c, — and 
we can form a more adequate idea of the wide circuit of the work under- 
taken, and of the vast variety of the details which it comprehends. 

Mr. Mann, in entering on his work, availed himself of three modes 
of influencing the public. 1. By lectures addressed to conventions 
of teachers and friends of education, which were held at first annually 
in each county of the state. It was made his duty, as secretary, to 
attend these conventions, both for the purpose of obtaining informa- 
tion in regard to the condition of the schools, and of explaining to the 
public what were supposed to be the leading motives and objects of 
the legislature in creating the Board. His addresses, prepared for 
these occasions, and for teachers' associations, lyceums, &c, were 
designed for popular and promiscuous audiences, and were admirably 
adapted to awaken a lively interest, and enlist parental, patriotic, and 
religious motives in behalf of the cause. 2. In the Report which 
he was required annually to make to the Board of his own do- 
ings, and the condition and improvement of the public schools, he 
presented more didactic expositions of the wants of the great cause 
of Education, and the relations which that cause holds to the interests 
of civilization and human progress. 3. In the '■'■Common School 
Journal,'''' which he conducted on his own responsibility, he gave 
more detailed and specific views, in regard to modes and processes 
of instruction and training, and the general management of schools. 

Of his numerous lectures, seven were published in a volume,* pre- 
pared for the press, by a special request of the Board, in 1840. These 
lectures alone would establish for him a permanent reputation as an 
eloquent writer, and profound thinker, in this dej)artment of literature. 
But his twelve Annual Reports constitute an enduring monument of 
well-directed zeal in the public service, and of large, comprehensive, 
and practical views of educational improvement, and of his power as 
a master of the English language. We shall, in justice to Mr. Mann, 
and for the valuable suggestions which even an imperfect analysis of 
these remarkable documents must impart, pass them in rapid review. 

* Lectures on Education, by Horace Mann, pp. 338. Contents. — Lecture I. Means and Ob- 
jects of Common School Education. II. Special Preparation, a prerequisite to Teaching, 
III. The Necessity of Education in a Republican Government. IV. What God does, and 
what He leaves for Man to do, in the work of Education. V. An Historical View of Educa- 
tion ; showing its dignity and its Degradation. VI. On District School Libraries. VII. On 
School Punishments. 



HORACE MANN. 



623 



Analysis of Mr. Mann's Reports as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board 
of Education. 

In his first report, submitted less than five months after his acceptance of the 
post of Secretary of the Board of Education, Mr. Mann presented a comprehen- 
sive survey of the condition of the public schools of the state, under four heads; 
viz., I. The situation, construction, condition, and number of the school-houses ; 
to which he devoted a supplementary report, with a free exposition of his 
views in regard to ventilation and warming, size, desks, seats, location of school* 
houses, light, windows, yards or playgrounds, and the duty of instructors in re- 
gard to these structures. These were accompanied with two plans of the interior 
of school-houses. II. The manner in which the school committees performed 
their duties. Under this head he specified their neglect in regard to the time of 
examining teachers, the character of the examinations, the hesitation in rejecting 
incompetent candidates ; their neglect of the law requiring them to secure uni- 
formity of school books, and furnishing them to the scholars at the expense of the 
town, when the parents neglected to furnish them — their negligence in not en- 
forcing attendance, regularity, and punctuality, and in not visiting the schools as the 
law demanded. The causes of this neglect, want of compensation, and conse- 
quently of penalty for non-performance of duties, the hostility often induced by a 
faithful performance of duty, and the ingratitude with which their services were 
treated, thus preventing the best men from accepting the office. Remedies for 
these evils were also suggested ; viz., compensation for services, penalties for neg- 
lect, and an annual report by each committee. III. Apathy onthepartof the com- 
munity in relation to schools. This is of two kinds. The apathy of those in- 
different to all education, which, in the influx of an ignorant and degraded popu- 
lation, would naturally increase ; and apathy toward the public or free schools, 
on the part of those who considered them as not supplying the education needed, 
and hence sought to procure that education for their children, in academies and 
private schools. Under this head, he propounded the true theory of public 
schools, the measures necessary to secure their efficiency, and the objections to 
private schools as means of popular education. IV. Competency of Teachers. 
The obstacles to this competency were considered ; viz., low compensation, pre- 
venting its being followed as a profession ; the low standard of attainment re- 
quired ; and the ulterior objects of those who engaged in it temporarily. With 
a few remarks concerning the necessity of school registers, apparatus, &c, and 
the best time for the election of school officers, the report closed. 

Mr. Mann's second report, after briefly reviewing the evidences of progress 
in Nantucket, and some other large towns, during the previous year, and the de- 
linquencies of others, is mainly occupied with the discussion of the importance of 
better instruction in language, in the public schools, and the best methods of 
effecting it. The existing methods of instruction in spelling and reading are de- 
scribed, their defects noted, and the measures proposed for remedying them men- 
tioned. The teaching of the young child words before letters (a plan previously 
advocated by Dr. Gallaudet,) is strongly recommended, and cogent reasons given 
for its adoption. The faulty character of the selections in school reading-books, 
are noticed, their want of connection and interest to the pupil, the utter unintel- 
ligibility of many of them ; spellers and definers discarded as suitable means of 
giving children ideas of the meaning of words ; dictionaries for study, regarded 



(324 HORACE MANN. 

as better, but still exceptional — the preparation of readers, detailing in simple 
and interesting style, events of home life — popular treatises on natural science — 
voyages and travels and, as the vocabulary of the pupil increases, and his percep- 
tions of matters of argument and reason increases, the advance to the discussion 
of higher topics may be encouraged. Compositions, translations, and paraphrases, 
should be required early, and generally should be of a descriptive rather than a 
didactic character. The effects of this method of instruction are portrayed in 
the vivid language of the secretary — its elevation of the taste, refinement of the 
manners, and the preparation which it would give the community for the enjoy- 
ment of a higher and purer literature. With a brief discussion of the question 
whether the Board of Education should recommend a series of school books, and 
some incidental allusions to matters of detail, the report closes. 

Mr. Mann commences his third report with congratulations to the Board of 
Education, on the evidences of progress and improvement evinced by the school 
returns, and other facts which he lays before them ; and, after stating briefly the 
efforts made for the instruction of children on the lines of railroad then in course 
of construction, and the number and character of the violations of the laws rela- 
tive to the employment of children in manufactories, without giving them oppor- 
tunities of education, he proceeds to discuss, in all its bearings, the necessity of 
libraries in school districts. He gives at length, statistics, carefully collected, rela- 
tive to the number, character, and accessibility of the existing libraries in the 
state, showing that there were in the state, including college, society, theological, 
and other public libraries, some 300,000 volumes ; that the use of them was con- 
fined to not over 100,000 persons, while 600,000 had no access to them — that one 
hundred towns of the state had no public libraries of any description ; that of the 
books in the libraries, very few, not over one-twentieth, were adapted to the use 
of children, or young persons ; that many of them were out of date, old, and in- 
correct ; that the greater part of those in circulation were works of fiction, and 
many of them of injurious or immoral tendency, while a few were composed 
mainly of historical and scientific works. Other facts are stated, showing the 
prevalent tendency in the popular mind, to read only, or mainly, works of fiction 
and amusement. The mental and moral influence of various descriptions of 
reading, is next fully discussed. The effect of reading, in the formation and 
development of character illustrated. Statistics are next given of the lyceum and 
other lectures, maintained in the state, their advantages and disadvantages are 
shown, and the impossibility of their acting as substitutes for libraries, in the work 
of public instruction, fully demonstrated. The reasons why school district libra- 
ries should be established, and at the expense of the state, in part, are forcibly sta- 
ted — the density of the population, the necessity for high education to sustain 
such a population — the advantages of the subdivision of districts, in carrying 
libraries to every man's neighborhood — the inability of the small districts to com- 
pete, unaided, with the larger, in supplying themselves with libraries, yet their 
greater need of them, from the brevity of their period of school sessions, are all 
urged. The character of the books necessary for such libraries, is then dwelt 
upon ; natural science, biography, well-written history, agricultural and popular 
scientific works — works on physiology and hygiene, on morals and their applica- 
tions — and, when practicable, biographical dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other 
works of a similar character, as reference books, are specified. The general de- 
mand for libraries, throughout the state, is noticed in conclusion. 



HORACE MANN. g25 

In Lis fourth keport, Mr. Mann, after a brief general review of the gratifying 
progress of the state, in educational matters, in the three years preceding, and a 
portrayal of the material advantages which would ensue from the publication and 
circulation of the abstracts of the school reports, enters upon a full discussion of 
the topics suggested by these reports, prefacing it by a brief account of the prin- 
ciples on which schools have been supported since 1647, in Massachusetts. 

The topics treated are the following : school districts — the evils of their minute 
subdivision — the remedies suggested are the reunion of small districts, the plac- 
ing the whole management of the schools, where it was placed originally, in the 
hands of the towns, and the organization of union schools for the older scholars. 
The last measure is urged on the grounds of the economy of the plan, and the 
advantage gained in management and discipline; the condition and repair of 
school-houses is next considered, and a tax suggested, once in three or five years, 
to furnish means to the committee to keep the school-house in good repair. The 
inefficiency and unproductiveness of expenditure for public instruction, is next 
dwelt upon — the statistics of private school expenditure for instruction, in the 
branches taught in the public schools, given ; its wastefulness shown ; the greater 
advantages which would result from the expenditure of the same sum on the 
public schools, demonstrated ; and the moral evils which the present course causes, 
exhibited. The suggestions of the reports in regard to teachers, are then con- 
sidered. The advantage of increasing the number of female teachers, discussed ; 
the deficiencies in the qualifications of those examined, commented upon •, and the 
necessity of their possessing a thorough knowledge of common school studies, 
aptness to teach, ability in management and discipline, good manners, and unex- 
ceptionable morals, urged. The necessity of strict uniformity in school books, is 
demonstrated ; the advantages arising from the introduction of school apparatus 
and school libraries, mentioned ; constancy and punctuality of attendance urged, 
on the grounds of the monstrous loss and waste of time and money which are 
involved in irregularity and absence ; and the fearful deprivation of the best 
hours of life to the young, a loss not to be repaired. The enforcement of regular 
and punctual attendance is advised, by the efforts of the teachers to attach chil- 
dren to the school, by the use of the register, the notification of parents, the exam- 
ple of the teacher, and appeals to parents and guardians to encourage it. The 
duties of superintending or town committees, and of prudential committees, are 
briefly considered ; manifestation of parental interest in the schools, the evils 
of forcible breaking up the schools, and of absences from final examinations, re- 
ferred to ; and the report closes with a general retrospect. 

In his fifth report, Mr. Mann, after his usual resume of the results attained 
the previous year, and a few remarks on the advantage of increasing the number 
of meetings, and multiplying the points at which conventions of the friends of 
education should assemble, and some passing notice of the improvement in school 
districts, school -houses, appropriations of money by the towns, amount and regu- 
larity of attendance, length of schools, and uniformity of school books, discusses 
at length the best methods of ascertaining the qualifications of teachers for their 
work, a duty devolving, by law, on the town or superintending committees. Un- 
der the head of moral character, he recommends, where the candidate is not pre- 
viously known to the committee, strict scrutiny of his credentials, and a registry 
of the names of those who recommend them, and denounces, in the strongest 
terms, those who would be guilty of furnishing recommendations to persons 
40 



626 HORACE MANN. 

morally disqualified for the high calling of teachers of youth. Passing over the mat- 
ter of the scholarship of the teacher, which can generally be ascertained without 
much difficulty, he next considers the best method of ascertaining the ability of 
the teacher to impart knowledge, and his capacity for managing and governing a 
school — points of great importance, but which many of the school committees 
had declared impossible to be ascertained. In regard to the first, he recommends 
that the candidate should be questioned on his method of using the blackboard, 
his mode of teaching reading, whether he requires the children to understand 
the meaning of the words, and the sense of the passage read, his instruction in 
pronunciation, his time and method of teaching the arithmetical signs, his mode 
of instructing in geography, grammar, and arithmetic, his practice in regard to 
reviews, alternations of studies, &c. In relation to his ability to manage and govern 
a school, he suggests inquiries into his methods of preserving order and quiet in his 
school ; his views relative to the necessity and frequency of corporeal punishment ; 
his practice in exciting emulation by prizes, &c. He also suggests that inquiry 
should be made in regard to the special preparation made by the candidate for 
teaching, what instruction he has received on the art of teaching, either in nor- 
mal schools, or from books or teachers' periodicals. Some further suggestions are 
thus made relative to the details of the examination of teachers. 

The two Shaker societies had the previous year refused to allow their teachers 
to be examined, or their schools visited. The secretary shows, with great force, the 
absurdity of their course, and then passes to illustrate, by means of statistics and 
otherwise, the inequality in the means of education in different towns in the state. 
The facts being stated, he demonstrates by irrefragible arguments, and by the testi- 
mony of several of the largest employers of labor in the commonwealth, the dif- 
ference which this inequality of education makes in the productive value of the 
labor of the educated and uneducated. He thus shows, conclusively, that the 
state and individuals would be very greatly the gainers, in a pecuniary sense, by 
the universal diffusion of education. That a person with a good common school 
education will, in the same business, ordinarily earn fifty per cent, more than one 
without education — and this with less injury or expense of tools or machinery ; 
and that such persons usually live better, and are better members of society. The 
argument is an admirable one. 

In his sixth REroRT, Mr. Mann passes in review the progress of the preceding 
year, in the school appropriations, the attendance, vacations in the annual schools, 
employment of female teachers, compensation of teachers, reports of school 
committees, breaking up of schools, qualifications of teachers, dismission of in- 
competent teachers, school registers, and school district libraries ; and proceeds, 
under the head of selection of studies, to urge the importance of the introduc- 
tion of the study of physiology into the schools. To do this effectually, he goes 
at considerable length into a statement and illustration of the laws of life and 
health, and the daily and hourly violations of them by the masses. He also sub- 
mits the opinions of eminent physicians in regard to the importance of the study 
of physiology and hygiene to the young, and enforces these opinions by further 
argument and illustration. This portion of the report furnishes, in itself, an ad- 
mirable essay on physiology and hygiene, and is well worthy of perusal and 
study. 

Mr. Mann, in his seventh report, after his customary review of the condition 
of the schools of the state, proceeds to give an account of the observations made 



HORACE MANN. 627 

in his European tour of the preceding year, in which he had visited 
a large number of schools in England, Ireland, Scotland, Prussia, Germany, 
Holland, Belgium, and France. He visited not only the public schools of these 
countries, but their institutions for the blind, deaf mutes, orphans, vagrants, and 
juvenile offenders, also. Leaving these topics, however, Mr. Mann comes again 
upon his own appropriate ground, and considers the fearful evils of a partial sys- 
tem of education, as exhibited in England, giving numerous facts demonstrating 
the great inequality of the opportunities of education, the disproportion in the sala- 
ries of teachers, the vile and often degrading and obscene books used in the lowest 
class of schools, and the necessity of a general supervisory power on the subject of 
education. The school-houses, with the exception of some of the palaces devoted to 
private or endowed schools in England, he regarded as decidedly inferior to those 
of Massachusetts, in convenience and in ventilation. The reading-books, espe- 
cially in Germany, were better than ours, as being more practical in their charac- 
ter. There was but little more apparatus there than here. The blackboard was 
universally used, and for more purposes than here. In some schools he found 
the standard weights and measures of the country — a valuable aid to the under- 
standing of the comparative quantities contained in them. In some of the 
schools, as in Holland, there were cards containing fac-similes of the coins of the 
realm ; reading boards or frames (since introduced here,) were also found there. 
Models of implements of utility, collections of shells, minerals, seeds, woods, &c, 
and occasionally paintings of considerable value ; and, in nearly all, tasteful though 
cheap engravings and maps adorned the walls. The Lancasterian schools he found 
upon the wane, a " more excellent way " having been substituted for them. He 
was much pleased with the mental activity displayed in the Scotch schools, and 
with the thoroughness of their training in reading, and in exercises in language, 
but thought there was too much harshness, and too strong appeals to emulation in 
their management. 

But the Prussian schools were, in his view, superior to any others he saw in 
Europe. After reviewing briefly the orphan and vagrant schools of Potsdam, 
Halle, and Horn, giving to the apostolic Wichern his due meed of praise, he 
proceeds to treat of the classification of the Prussian schools, the method of teach- 
ing in the primary classes ; and here he urges with great force the advantage of 
the system adopted there of teaching words before letters. He also suggests that 
the phonic or lavtir method of spelling, which he found in use in Prussia, might 
with advantage be adopted here. After a brief reference to the way in which 
reading is taught in the higher classes, he proceeds to speak of their methods of 
instruction in arithmetic and mathematics, in grammar and composition. In 
writing and drawing, in geography, by the sketching of outlines on the black- 
board 5 in thinking exercises, knowledge of nature, the world, and society ; allud- 
ing, under these heads, to the careful and thorough preparation of the teachers 
for their work of instruction, and the entire absence of text-books, in instruction 
in Bible history and music, which he found universally taught in Prussia. He 
next gives an account of the seminaries for teachers, the preliminary course in 
which their eligibility to become members of the seminaries for teachers was de- 
cided, the course of instruction, its extreme thoroughness, and the high moral 
and religious tone of the instruction. In reviewing the period spent in Prussia 
and Saxony, he states these facts, viz., that he never saw a teacher hearing a 
lesson with a book in his hand ; he never saw a teacher sitting ; and he never saw 



628 



HORACE MANN. 



a child either arraigned for punishment, undergoing it, or having recently been 
punished. He does not intend to imply, by the last remark, that corporeal pun- 
ishment was entirely discarded, but that it was very seldom necessary to resort to 
it. The earnestness and interest of the teachers in their work, their evidently 
strong affection for their pupils, and the reciprocal affection engendered by this, 
were generally sufficient to produce obedience. Educational journals he found 
abundant, and well sustained. The school inspectors were men of high attain- 
ments, and qualified to fill the highest stations. School attendance was made 
compulsory by law, the parent being imprisoned if he neglected to send his child, 
after repeated warnings — but so well were the parents convinced of its advant- 
ages, that it was seldom necessary to appeal to the law. Mr. Mann next gives a 
brief account of the higher schools (the real and burger schools,) of Prussia and 
Saxony ; and assigns the reasons why, though the young are thus educated, yet 
the nation is in a condition of such apathy. 

He then proceeds to review some points, in the schools of other countries which 
he visited. Corporeal punishment was not used in Holland. In Scotland and 
England, on the contrary, it was in full force ; and, in some of the proprietary and 
endowed schools of England, solitary confinement still prevailed. In France, he 
found the system of surveillance in force in the boarding-schools and colleges — 
the watching being as close as in a prison. Emulation is an incentive in the Eng- 
lish and Scotch schools, of all grades ; and is allowed, though not extensively 
practiced, in the Prussian and Saxon schools. Its application to religious instruc- 
tion and attainment, Mr. Mann thinks highly objectionable. The religious instruc- 
tion, both in Great Britain and on the continent, is for the most part sectarian — 
a measure fraught with many and great evils, not the least of which are its polit- 
ical results. Mr. Mann closes with some eloquent reflections on the reasons we 
have for thankfulness that our lot was not cast among the effete, worn-out na- 
tions of Europe •, but that here civilization could have new opportunities of trial, 
unembarrassed by prescriptive rights, hereditary nobility, an absolute govern- 
ment, feudalism, or pauperism ; and sums up with this great truth, that " In a 
republic, ignorance is a crime ; and that private immorality is not less an op- 
probrium to the state than it is guilt in the perpetrator." 

In his eighth report, after giving his usual statistics of the advance in the 
cause of education in the state, and a few remarks on the increasing employment 
of female teachers, the enlarged amount of town appropriations, the gratifying in- 
crease in the number of school libraries, and the painful necessity of breaking up 
schools from the incompetency of teachers, he advocates, at some length, the or- 
ganization of teachers' institutes (which had already been established in New 
York,) and recommends an appropriation for the purpose ; he also notices, with 
approbation, the organization of county and town teachers' associations, suggests 
that school registers should hereafter be provided, in book form ; specifies the re- 
sults of an inquiry into the number of towns in which the Bible is not used in 
the schools ; and notices the causes which led to the removal of one of the state 
normal schools from Lexington to West Newton. He then proceeds to discuss 
the question of the distribution of the school moneys among the districts, giving 
statistics of the methods heretofore adopted, which were exceedingly various; and, 
without entering into details, urging the view that the distribution should be 
made in such a way as to give equal advantages to each district. This does not 
necessarily require an equal expenditure in each ; for one school may be large 



HORACE MANN. 629 

and require one or more assistants, another may be small and require but one 
teacher ; one may be composed mostly of large scholars and require a male 
teacher, another of small scholars and be benefited by having a good female 
teacher. Connected with this subject is the question of the power of the towns 
to raise money for school purposes, beyond the minimum required by the statute. 
Mr. Mann defends the liberal construction of the statute ; not only from motives of 
humanity and philanthropy, but from the evident design of the law-makers, as 
demonstrated from other enactments bearing upon the question. Another point 
considered in the report, is the teaching vocal music in the schools. He states 
that about five hundred, or nearly one-sixth of the schools in the commonwealth 
have already adopted the practice of singing in school; and urges the importance 
of its universal adoption, from the natural taste for it in all classes, from its refin- 
ing, softening, and purifying power, from the excellent results which it has pro- 
duced in other countries, and in our own wherever it has been introduced, for its 
promotion of health, as furnishing the means of intellectual exercises, and for its 
social and moral influence. He quotes also the opinions of Dr. Chalmers, and of 
Napoleon, in regard to the power of music in controlling men. Having thus de- 
monstrated the desirableness of this addition to school instruction, he proceeds to 
consider the means of accomplishing the obj ect. He suggests that the ability to sing 
should, as far as possible, be made one of the qualifications of the teacher ; and 
that, where this is impracticable, in the larger towns, a teacher should be hired, 
and in the smaller towns, benevolent persons, accomplished in the art, should 
volunteer to bestow instruction. 

The ninth report commences with some statistics of great interest; one table, 
showing that there were but twenty-two towns in the commonwealth which had 
not availed themselves of the state provision for school libraries ; another show- 
ing the progress of the school fund for ten years; a third giving the amount 
raised by the towns for school purposes, showing that the expenditure for schools, 
per annum, was more than one dollar for every inhabitant. The usual statistics 
in regard to length of schools, attendance, &c, are given ; and the necessity of 
enforcing a more full and punctual attendance, urged with great earnestness and 
eloquence. The compensation of teachers is next considered, and the secretary 
urges the necessity of increased compensation, and a higher standard of qualifica- 
tion, especially for female teachers ; on the ground of the severity and responsi- 
bility of their duties, the cost of training, and the fact that the best talent is now 
drawn away to private schools and seminaries, in other states, by the higher 
compensation offered them. The advantages of the new school register are pointed 
out ; the cases in which schools were broken up through the incompetency of 
the teacher, or other causes, which had largely increased under the new law of 
the previous year, are next analyzed ; the number of new teachers, and the com- 
paratively small number who make teaclrng a profession, are noticed ; an inter- 
esting narrative is given of the holding of the first teachers' institutes, whose or- 
ganization was due to the liberality of Hon. Edmund Dwight; a retrospect of the 
year, its progress, and its signs of promise, are recorded ; and Mr. Mann pro- 
ceeds to discuss the duties of the state for the future, in the cause of educa- 
tion. 

In connection with this subject, he speaks at considerable length of school-mo- 
tives, and of some means for avoiding and extirpating school vices. Under these 
heads, he considers, first, the character, duties, and qualifications of the school 



630 HORACE MANN. 

committees, urging the importance of their placing moral improvement, in their 
examinations of the school, in at least equal rank with intellectual progress, 
and that they should discountenance the effort on the part of teachers to en- 
courage intellectual progress, at the expense of moral culture, or the development 
of the evil passions of our nature. He next passes to the motives that should 
actuate the teacher. He must not he a hireling. He must love children and 
love his work. The contemplation of his work, in its ever-changing character, 
and its beneficence should constantly excite him to new zeal, and exhilarate his 
spirits ; if it do not, he is unfit for his work. He should enter the school-room as 
the friend and benefactor of his scholars ; should aim to secure their good-will ; 
should lead, not drive. Order must be maintained, but it should be maintained 
from reverence and regard for the teacher, and not from fear. No code of laws 
should be enacted, but every act should be submitted to the conscience of the 
school. Is it right ? not Is it written ? should be the question to be propounded 
by each scholar to his own conscience. It would be well for the teacher to speak 
of the duties to be done, of the reasons and rewards appertaining to them, rather 
than of offenses and their punishments. The moral instruction given by the 
teacher should have reference to their duties in school and at home ; the duty of 
cultivating the spirit of honor and kindness to each other ; the desire of aiding 
each other's improvement ; the cowardice and meanness of attributing to others 
our own faults and offenses ; the despicable character of falsehood and decep- 
tion, &c, &c. 

The government of the school is next considered ; the influence of the fear of 
punishment, and of the restraint of higher motives, is compared; and, though 
corporeal punishment may be necessary in extreme cases, it should be abandoned 
when higher motives can be brought to bear upon the pupil. Fear is neither 
curative nor restorative ; it is, at some times and in some cases, preventive, and 
hence should not be proscribed from the teacher's list of motives, but when both 
teacher and pupil reach that higher plane of action, for which, we are striving, 
we may hope to substitute love and duty for it. In this connection, Mr. Mann ex- 
presses himself decidedly opposed to the practice of expelling refractory and dis- 
obedient children from the school ; they should be retained and subdued. In the 
exercises of the school-room, every true teacher will consider the train of feeling, 
not less than the train of thought, which is evolved ; and the importance of being 
alive to the bearing and influence of them upon the character of his pupils 
can not be overrated. 

Imperfect recitations, and their penalties, may exert an unhappy influence. 
The teacher should not induce them by giving too long lessons, and he should not 
suffer any scholar habitually to break down in recitation ; and, above all, a class 
should not be allowed to do so, from the loss of the sense of shame, contempt for 
the study, and recklessness, which wouM follow. The other temptations in regard 
to lessons are next considered, and the means of obviating and overcoming them 
stated. The slurring or shirking lessons, the acted falsehood of procuring others 
to do the work, and then presenting it as the pupil's own, the prompting others 
at recitation, and the relying on others to prompt one, and the evils which follow 
from them, and the best means of preventing them, are fully stated. The use of 
keys, or answers, in mathematical studies, is also condemned, not more 
for the ignorance of the principles of mathematics which it exhibits, than 
for the deception and falsehood which it inevitably occasions ; and the teacher 



HORACE MANN. 631 

is recommended to give out original questions and problems, to thwart the 
practice. 

The prevention of whispering, and other forms of communication, is the next 
topic considered, and the various methods taken to prevent it are discussed, and 
the moral danger attendant upon some of them noticed. The intense occupa- 
tion of the pupils, and the elevation of the moral standard to such a tone as shall 
array the moral force of the pupils against whispering, and in favor of self-denial, 
are commended as the most effectual preventive. 

Truancy is another school-vice to be overcome. This can be done by rendering 
the school attractive, by careful and accurate registration, and by frequent confer- 
ence with parents. The motives to be brought to bear on children are numerous. 
The objects of knowledge should be made attractive, both by their order of pre- 
sentation and the manner of exhibiting them ; this requires high powers and 
attainments on the part of the teacher. Fear, ambition, emulation, if used as 
motives, must be used sparingly, and with a full consciousness of the evils which 
would result from their excessive application. The relative rank which is as- 
signed to mental and moral qualities in the teacher's mind, will determine the 
propriety or impropriety of using emulation as an incentive. With some appro- 
priate remarks on the preparation for school examinations, showing the necessity 
of their being only the measure of the actual progress of the pupils in knowledge, 
and some admirable suggestions on the possibility of inculcating moral lessons 
through intellectual exercises, and a contrast of the inductive with the dogmatic 
method of instruction, this able report closes. 

Mr. Mann's tenth report commences with the announcement of some cheer- 
ing facts relative to the advancement of the cause of education in the state. The 
amount appropriated by the towns for the support of schools, had risen from 
$400,000, in 1837, to $620,000, in 1845. The number of female teachers em- 
ployed had increased from 3591 to 4997, while the number of male teachers was 
only 215 more than nine years previous. More than $1,200,000 had been ex- 
pended during the same period for the erection and repair of school-houses ; the 
amount of apparatus had increased a hundred fold ; the methods of instruction, 
through the influence of normal schools and teachers' institutes, and the greater 
strictness of examinations, had been greatly improved. Examinations both of 
teachers and schools had been conducted, in many instances, by written or 
printed questions. The government and discipline of the schools had been much 
improved ; induced by a higher degree of competency on the parts of the teach- 
ers, more careful examination of the teachers, and visitation of the schools, and 
deeper interest on the part of parents ; five hundred schools, almost one-sixth of 
the entire number, had been taught, and well taught, without a resort to corporeal 
pun'shment. The aggregate attendance had been a little advanced, though too 
little ; and the average length of the schools had increased, since 1837, fifteen per 
cent. The circulation of the school abstracts had accomplished a vast amount of 
good, and the teachers' institutes and normal schools, were well attended, and 
were qualifying a better class of teachers for the state. 

Having stated these encouraging facts, Mr. Mann next proceeds to give some 
account of the Massachusetts school system, commencing with the history of its 
origin and the arguments for a system of free schools. He specifies, first, the ar- 
gument adduced for it, by its early founders, — the necessity of universal education 
for the promotion of the Protestant faith, — an insufficient argument, because on 



632 HORACE MANN. 

that ground the Romanist should oppose it ; next, the argument that it was 
necessary for the preservation and perpetuity of republican institutions ; this, too, 
an untenable ground, as a monarchist should, in that case, be opposed to it; the 
argument of the political economist, and of the moralist, who extends the 
positions of the economist, are next stated ; and Mr. Mann proceeds to defend 
free schools, by an argument resting on higher grounds than either. Laying 
down the postulate that every child of the human family has the same right to au 
education that he has to inhale the air which keeps him in life, or to enjoy the 
light of the sun, or to receive that shelter, protection, and nourishment, which are 
necessary to the continuance of his bodily existence, he proceeds to defend this 
postulate by the following argument. Property, whether real or personal, has for 
its main, primary, and natural elements and ingredients, the riches of the soil, the 
treasures of the sea, the light and warmth of the sun, fertilizing clouds, streams, 
and dews, the wind, and the chemical and vegetative agencies of nature. But 
these are the gifts of God, not to individuals, but to the race ; hence the individual 
can have but a life tenure, and is bound to transmit the property thus acquired, 
not only unimpaired, but improved, to the next generation. Again, of that por- 
tion of property which may be said to be the direct result of human toil, how very 
small a portion is there, for which the present generation is not indebted to those 
which have preceded it ; our government, laws, institutions, our houses, roads, 
churches, the arts, sciences, discoveries, and inventions, by which we are enabled 
to apply labor profitably, were all, or most of them, handed down to us by those 
who have preceded us ; and we are but the trustees of the accumulations of the 
ages to those who shall come after us. It follows from these premises that the next 
generation have a claim on that which we hold as property, such as the ward has 
upon the guardian, and hence there is an obligation on us to qualify those yet in 
their minority, for their future inheritance, and they have a right to the use of so 
much of their future inheritance as may be pecessary thus to qualify them, be- 
fore they come into full possession. Mr. Mann illustrated this also in other ways, 
as by the case of several proprietors of land on the same stream, where those 
above cannot corrupt, or injure the quality, or diminish the quantity, of water to 
which those below are entitled, and thus the occupant below has some claim upon 
the waters above, before they reach his land ; or, in the case of persons occupying 
the same vicinity, one can not injure or vitiate the quality of the atmosphere, 
which the others are to breathe. He sums up the argument as follows : " The 
successive generations of men, taken collectively, constitute one great common- 
wealth." 

The property of this commonwealth is pledged for the education of all its 
youth, up to such a point as will save them from poverty and vice, and prepare 
them for the adequate performance of their social and civil duties. 

The successive holders of this property are trustees, bound to the faithful exe- 
cution of their trust by the most sacred obligations ; because embezzlement and 
pillage from children and descendants, are as criminal as the same offenses, when 
perpetrated against contemporaries. Having thus laid his foundations broad and 
deep, he proceeds to show how the free school system of Massachusetts is reared 
upon them ; giving first the constitutional provision relative to free schools, 
and then, under the following heads, in popular language, the substance of the 
legal enactment, and decisions bearing on the subject. Territorial organization of 
the state, duty of towns to maintain schools (giving under this head the decision 



HORACE MANN. (333 

of the supreme court in the case of Cushing vs. Inhabitants of Newburyport,) 
school districts, prudential committees, district school-houses, school district taxes, 
contiguous school districts, in adjoining towns, union school districts, school com- 
mittees, duty of the town committee to provide a school when the prudential 
committee fails to do so, duty of the town committee in regard to schools kept for 
the benefit of all the inhabitants of the town, visitation of schools, school-books, 
religious liberty, teachers, Board of Education, school registers, inquiries and re- 
turns, committees' reports, school abstracts, reports of the Board of Education, ap- 
paratus, district school libraries, state normal schools, teachers' institutes, penal- 
ties for not providing and for withholding the means of education, aids and en- 
couragements to education, provision for answering the requests of other states 
and countries. 

With an eloquent peroration on the results which have already been realized 
from this general diffusion of education in the state, Mr. Mann closes this long 
and able report, occupying in all nearly 300 pages. 

The eleventh REroRT announces an advance of more than $50,000 over the 
preceding year in the appropriations for the support of schools, an increase of 
241 in the number of female teachers employed, and an advance in the monthly 
stipend paid to both male and female teachers; which, however, especially in the 
case of females, it still pronounces far below what it should be, and urges a decided 
increase. The schools were held an average period of eight months, and the attend- 
ance was also increasing. The tables in the school abstracts had been prepared 
by the secretary, and an important one added, arranging the towns in the state 
in the order of their merit or delinquency in regard to attendance of scholars ; 
thus demonstrating an important fact, that the attendance was much better in the 
scattered rural districts than in the cities and large towns. In this connection he 
suggests the importance of a change in the apportionment of the income of the 
school fund, bestowing it according to the actual attendance upon the schools, and 
urges some potent reasons for such a measure ; he refers to an error in the act 
of 1847, relative to the forwarding reports and returns by the school com- 
mittees, suggests some improvements in regard to holding teachers' institutes, and 
to the condition of the state normal schools, &C, and then proceeds to discuss a 
topic which he deems of vital interest to the state, viz., The power of common 
schools, if under proper management and control, and attended hy all the chil- 
dren of the state, to redeem the state from social vices and crimes. During the 
preceding year, Mr. Mann had addressed a circular to John Griscom, Esq., an 
eminent teacher and reformer, David P. Page, Esq., of the New York State Nor- 
mal School, Solomon Adams, Esq., Rev. Jacob Abbott, F. A. Adams, Esq., E. A. 
Andrews, Esq., Roger S. Howard, Esq., and Miss Catherine E. Beecher, all dis- 
tinguished and experienced teachers, in which, after stating that he regarded high 
moral qualifications as an essential to successful teaching, he had propounded the 
following queries : — 

1. "How many years have you been engaged in school-keeping ; and whether 
in the country, or populous towns, or cities ? " 

2. " About how many children have you had under your care ; of which sex, 
and between what ages?" 

3. " Should all our schools be kept by teachers of high intellectual and moral 
qualifications, and should all the children in the community be brought within 
these schools for ten months in a year, from the age of four to that of sixteen 
years; then what proportion, — what per centage, — of such children as you have 



634 HORACE MANN. 

had under your care, could, in your opinion, be so educated and trained, that their 
existence, on going out into the world, would be a benefit and not a detriment, an 
honor and not a shame, to society ? Or, to state the question in a general form, if 
all children were brought within the salutary and auspicious influences I have 
here supposed, what per centage of them should you pronounce to be irreclaim- 
able and hopeless ? Of course, I do not speak of imbeciles or idiots, but only of 
rational and accountable beings." 

The persons to whom these inquiries were addressed, were all believers in the 
Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity, and a transmitted sinful nature, so that no 
theory of the innate goodness, or perfectibility of human nature, could have in- 
fluenced their opinion, yet there is a wonderful unanimity in the views they ex- 
pressed. Mr. Griscom, a cautious, careful member of the Society of Friends, a 
teacher for forty-two or forty-three years, replied : " My belief is that, under the 
conditions mentioned in the question, not more than two per cent, would be irre- 
claimable nuisances to society, and that ninety-five per cent, would be supporters 
of the moral welfare of the community in which they resided. ***** 
Finally, in the predicament last stated in the circular, and supposing the teachers 
to be imbued with the gospel spirit, I believe there would not be more than one 
half of one per cent, of the children educated, on whom a wise judge would be 
compelled to pronounce the doom of hopelessness and irreelaimability." 

Mr. Page says, under the circumstances stated, " I should scarcely expect, after 
the first generation of children submitted to the experiment, to fail, in a single 
case, to secure the results you have named." 

Mr. S. Adams says : " So far as my own experience goes, so far as my knowl- 
edge of the experience of others extends, so far as the statistics of crime throw 
any light on the subject, I should confidently expect that ninety-nine in a hun- 
dred, and I think even more, with such means of education as you have sup- 
posed, and with such divine favor as we are authorized to expect, would become 
good members of society, the supporters of order and law, and truth and justice, 
and all righteousness." 

Rev. Jacob Abbott replies : " If all our schools were under the charge of teach- 
ers possessing what I regard as the right intellectual and moral qualifications, and 
if all the children in the community were brought under the influence of these 
schools, for ten months in the year, I think the work of training up the whole 
community to intelligence and virtue, would soon be accomplished, as completely 
as any human end can be obtained by human means." 

Mr. F. A. Adams had met with but two boys, out of nearly four hundred, who 
had been under his care, of whose correct conduct, under the circumstances 
supposed, he would have any doubt ; and even them he could not regard as ut- 
terly irreclaimable. 

Mr. E. A. Andrews replies : "On these conditions, and under these circum- 
stances, I do not hesitate to express the opinion that the failures need not be, — 
would not be, — one per cent." 

Miss Beecher says : " Let it be so arranged that all these children shall remain 
till sixteen, under their teachers, and also that they shall spend their lives in this 
city (i. e. the city where they had been taught,) and I have no hesitation in say- 
ing, I do not believe that one, no, not a single one, would fail of proving a re- 
spectable and prosperous member of society ; nay, more, I believe every one 
would, at the close of life, find admission into the world of peace and love." 



HORACE MANN. 535 

Having obtained such weighty evidence in favor of the plan suggested, Mr. 
Mann proceeds to consider what is necessary to carry it out, and states, as the 
prerequisites, the advancement of all the teachers of the state to the physi- 
cal, intellectual, and moral qualifications of those who now occupy the high- 
est rank ; and, second, the power of enforcing the attendance of all the children 
of the state in school ten months in the year, during the period between the 
ages of four and sixteen. Can these prerequisites be attained ? He believes 
they can, and urges the following considerations. The talent and ability for a 
supply of such teachers as are required, sufficient for this demand, exists in the state, 
as is evident from the large number who, entering at first on the teacher's pro- 
fession, forsake it for those more lucrative, and considered more honorable, and 
who attain in these high distinction. If the standard of requirements was raised, 
and the compensation put as high as the average of other professions, the num- 
ber would soon be sufficient ; that the state could afford to do this, is demonstra- 
ted from the fact that the expense would not exceed three times what it is now, and 
the saving effected in the diminution of crime and vice, as is easily proved, would 
amount to tenfold the cost. 

In regard to attendance, he shows that the previous legislation of Massachu- 
setts, and other states, settles the question of the power of enforcing attendance ; 
that in most cases it would be a benefit to the parent, and in all to the child ; that 
in the case of the vicious and indolent parent, who now lives on his child's labor, 
it is but justice; and in the case of the honest and virtuous poor, to whom it 
might be a hardship, the state could and should compensate for the loss of serv- 
ice. In regard to the loss of service to the public, he demonstrates that the 
number employed is comparatively few, and that, in these cases, the mote intelli- 
gent labor of the educated child, over sixteen years of age, would be sufficiently 
profitable to compensate for any loss which might otherwise ensue. He then 
urges, in a most eloquent appeal to the Board, the importance of taking this bold 
step forward, and securing to the rising generation Universality of Education. 

Some months prior to the presentation of his twelfth and last report, Mr. 
Mann had resigned his office as secretary of the Board of Education, in conse- 
quence of his election to Congress. This report was prepared at the request of 
the Board, as his farewell address to those with whom, and for whom, he had, for 
almost twelve years, so faithfully labored. 

In this report he reviews his past labors, contrasting the condition of the public 
schools of the commonwealth, at the time he accepted office, with their present 
state, enumerating, with a justifiable pride, the doubling of the appropriations for 
schools, the expenditure of $2,200,000 on school-houses during the period, the 
rapid increase of female teachers, as indicating the high intellectual culture of the 
sex, the increase in attendance, the organization and successful operation of the 
state normal schools and teachers' institutes, the district school libraries, which, in 
some seven or eight years, had risen from nothing, to an aggregate of more than 
91,000 volumes, and the beneficent legislation of the past two years, by which the 
sphere of the teachers' institutes was enlarged, power given to take land on ap- 
praisal for the location of school-houses, the inmates of jails and houses of cor- 
rection provided with instruction, the idiot and imbecile brought under humanizing 
and enlightening influences, and the juvenile offender reformed, instead of being 
brutalized by the associations of a prison. Having thus laid before the Board 
the existing condition of education in the state, he proceeds, as in his former 
reports, to discuss a particular topic, or class of topics more at length. 



636 HORACE MANN. 

Announcing, as his general subject, " The capacities of our present school sys- 
tem to improve the pecuniary condition, and to elevate the intellectual and moral 
character of the commonwealth," he proceeds to show the comparative insignifi- 
cance of Massachusetts with most of the other states in territorial extent ; its 
paucity of mineral resources, and of natural facilities for internal intercourse ; its 
rock-bound and sterile soil, and its political inferiority in the number of its repre- 
sentatives in the national councils ; and then, in a passage of rare eloquence and 
beauty, a regal gem, even among his profusion of brilliant passages, he urges that 
her very diminutiveness should be a stimulus to higher achievements ; and that 
" the narrow strip of half-cultivated land, that lies between her eastern and 
western boundaries, is not Massachusetts ; but her noble and incorruptible men, 
her pure and exalted women, the children in all her schools, whose daily lessons 
are the preludes and rehearsals of the great duties of life, and the prophecies of 
future eminence, — these are the state." Developing and applying this idea, he 
proceeds to consider the common school as the most effective and benignant of all the 
forces of civilization and progress, and to show how the true business of the school- 
room connects itself and becomes identical with the great interests of society. 
He considers, first, the influence of correct views of physical education, such as 
might be disseminated from the school-room. By means of this, life might be 
prolonged, sickness, insanity, and pain prevented, weakness replaced by vigor, 
the appetites controlled, and the vices of excess subdued, and the body, God's 
earthly temple, made fit and seemly for the abode of an indwelling divinity. 

Considering next the beneficial effects of a universal diffusion of intellectual 
education on the community, and especially a community situated like Massachu- 
setts, he shows, by numerous illustrations, that the only efficient preventive of the 
division of society into a wealthy aristocracy and a poor and dependent laboring 
class, is that intellectual culture, which shall make the poor in money the equal 
of the rich, in intellectual power, in inventive genius, and in that skill and crea- 
tive energy which, whatever may be their employment, will prevent them from 
remaining in the ranks of the poor. He passes next to the consideration of polit- 
ical education, and its influence in the promotion of wise action, in all that apper- 
tains to the government of the state or the nation ; in the prevention of arbitrary 
exactions, of monopolies, of lotteries, and of licenses for the commission of crime 5 
the too frequent administration of the oath, under circumstances inviting perjury; 
the preservation of the sanctity of the ballot-box ; and the inculcation of those 
great principles of political science, which lie at the basis of all our institutions. 

But far higher in importance is moral education. It is a primal necessity of 
social existence. Educated intellect, uncontrolled by moral principle, would be but 
the minister of evil. In all the history of man, intellect, unrestrained by con- 
science, has subverted right, and turned good into evil, until, spite of the restric- 
tions of law, the arguments of the moralist, and the warnings and appeals of the 
minister of Christianity, it has attained a status so formidable, that some have 
been ready to give up the world as a total loss, utterly gone to wreck. The at- 
tempt to give to all the children of a community a careful moral training has not 
yet, however, been made ; and, till this fails, we need not despair. We have in 
its favor the strongest testimony of experienced teachers, and, more than this, the 
declaration of holy writ : " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he 
is old he will not depart from it." But to the full consummation of so glorious a 
result, more is needed than mere training, in morals. Religious education is 



HORACE MANN. (337 

requisite. By this is meant, not sectarian education, not the teaching after and 
of this or that denomination, but those great truths of revelation in which all can 
agree, and which will cause men to know and reverence God, and love their 
fellow-men. The question how this religious education shall be conveyed to the 
young, is an important one. It must not be a religion established by government, 
with its formulas and creeds, for all history shows that this uniformly shelters and 
encourages the vilest hypocrisy and irreligion. It may not be done by permitting 
to one sect or another the control of all religious instruction. It can only, in our 
common schools, be accomplished by putting the Bible, the eternal rule of right, 
into the hands of the pupils, and causing the teacher, by precept, and above all by 
example, to enforce and illustrate its blessed teachings. 

In this connection, Mr. Mann vindicates, at some length, the Board of Educa- 
tion, and himself, from the charge of encouraging or favoring irreligion, and, as it 
was charged, with advocating "godless schools." He shows, conclusively, that 
both the Board and its secretary advocated and urged the use of the scriptures in 
all the schools, from some of which they had been rejected when he came into 
office, but were restored at his instance ; that he and the Board opposed the 
teaching of denominational catechisms and sectarian instruction, as being incon- 
sistent with the laws, and deleterious to the best interests, of the schools ; and he 
demonstrates, conclusively, that any other course would have proved ruinous to 
the schools, of great and lasting injury to the community, and of no benefit even 
to the parties who urged it. 

With a thrilling appeal to the citizens of Massachusetts to act worthy of their 
fathers, and of the noble destiny which the future has in reserve for them, Mr. 
Mann closes his report. 

In a brief supplementary report, with his usual thoughtfulness for the welfare 
of others, he suggests to the Board, that his successor will need an office (which 
he had never had,) a clerk, and some compensation for his traveling expenses ; 
and incidentally, though with great modesty, he unveils a part of his own arduous 
labors. He had averaged fifteen hours labor per diem, from the time of taking 
the office, had never had a day of relaxation, and, we may add, what he did not, 
had expended more than the half of his salary for the cause of education. 

The foregoing brief synopsis of Mr. Mann's twelve annual reports 
to the Board of Education, will give the reader, who is not familiar 
with the documents themselves, only a faint idea of the fullness and 
ability with which the vast details of school organization, administra- 
tio;i, instruction, and discipline, are discussed. To be appn dated 
they must be read; and we know of no series of educational reports, 
by one mind, in any language, so readable, or so instructive. We 
hope the author will consent to their republication — or, what will be 
bitter, will himself recast the whole into a complete treatise on the 
public schools of Massachusetts. 

N 0TE —The original eilition of these reports was long ago exhausted, but all except the 
10th. llth, and 12th, were republished in the ''Common SchoolJournal," sets of which can 
still be had. To bring the many valuable suggestions, eloquently expressed, of Mr Mann to 
the knowledge of our readers, we shall enrich several of the subsequent numbers of our 
Journal with copious extracts from his publications, arranged under appropriate headings. 



638 HORACE MANN. 

In addition to his annual and occasional lectures before county con- 
ventions, educational associations, teachers' 1 institutes, and lyceums ; and 
to his annual reports, as secretary, Mr. Mann himself contributed 
largely to the pages, and superintended the monthly publication, of the 
"Common School Journal" making ten octavo volumes, with which 
every public library of the country should be supplied, as a valuable 
part of our educational literature. 

No inconsiderable portion of each year was given to the prepara- 
tion of the Abstracts of the reports and returns of the school com- 
mittees of the several towns of the Commonwealth — a labor, before 
his appointment, and since his retirement, performed by a clerk — but 
which was added to his other duties, and which was cheerfully per- 
formed, because of the intrinsic value of the documents thus prepared 
and published. The real progress and strength of the common 
school movement, can nowhere be better traced and felt, than in the 
statistical tables and reports of committees to the several towns, in 
these abstracts. 

Added to all these labors was a correspondence with school officers, 
teachers, and active friends of educational improvement, both in and 
out of the state, which, in itself, was sufficient to employ a clerk dur- 
ing regular office hours, but which was performed by Mr. Mann, at 
such intervals, in any part of the day or night, as he could command, 
not otherwise appropriated. 

To all these labors of the voice and pen — of brain and muscle — at 
home and abroad — must be added the "wear and tear " of spirits, 
as well as the physical labor of writing in defense of himself and the 
board, from numerous attacks which were made, from time to time, 
upon his and their measures and publications. 

The most memorable of these attacks, as connected with the edu- 
cational policy of the state, was the attempt made in the legislature 
of 1840, for the abolition of the Board of Education, the discontinu- 
ance of the normal schools, the payment back to Edmund Dwight 
of the money which he had given to aid in the advancement of these 
schools, and generally for setting things back to the point from which 
they had started three years before. A majority of the committee 
on education, sprang a bill upon the House for accomplishing these 
purposes, without the knowledge of the minority of the committee, 
who were favorable to the board, until a few hours before the report 
was submitted. No opportunity was allowed, either by the commit- 
tee, or the house, for a counter report, but an attempt was made to 
drive the bill through, without delay and without debate. Delay was 
secured, a counter report was made by the minority, a debate was 



HORACE MANN. 



639 



had, and the wise policy of former legislatures in establishing the 
board, and in inaugurating the system of special institutions, and 
courses of training for the professional training of teachers was ably 
vindicated, and, contrary to all expectation, on the part of the best 
friends of the board, and the secretary, the measure was defeated, and 
so thoroughly, that no attempt was afterward made to discontinue 
this department of the government. The friends of public schools, 
and of special institutions, for the qualification and improvement of 
teachers, and of state supervision of the great interest of education, 
in every state, owe a large debt of gratitude to those men who 
achieved a triumph for the Board of Education, the normal schools, 
and Mr. Mann, in the legislature of Massachusetts, in 1840.* Defeat 
there and then, added to the disastrous policy in Pennsylvania, Ohio, 
and Connecticut, about the same time, in reference to common schools, 
would have changed the whole condition of public instruction in this 
country, for a half century, if not forever. 

In the winter of 1844, the fundamental principle of the common 
school system of Massachusetts, its requiring of all teachers to incul- 
cate the principles of piety, justice, universal benevolence, and other 
Christian virtues, and its prohibition of those things "which are cal- 
culated to favor the tenets of any particular sect" — the sole basis of 
common schools can be maintained among differing and discordant 
religious denominations — was assailed by violent attacks on the board 
and their secretary, on the ground that they, and particularly Mr. 
Mann, had, for the first time, asserted this principle, in such form and 
to such extent as to exclude all religious men and all distinctive re- 
ligious instruction from the public schools, and their administration. 
To these grave charges, variously reiterated, Mr. Mann replied in 
"Three Letters,'' 1 which were afterward republished in a pamphlet, 
entitled "The Common School Controversy.' 1 '' In these letters Mr. 
Mann vindicates, in a masterly manner, both the policy of the consti- 
tution and school laws of Massachusetts, in this regard, but showed, 
undeniably, that the charges made against the board — as to the ques- 
tionable religious character of a majority of the members who had 
composed it, from time to time, and of the documents which the 
board or secretary had published, and as to the influence and results 
of their actions, and of their publication, so far as the same could be 

* The majority and minority reports, together with letters from George B. Emerson, Sam- 
nel G. Howe, and remarks in the house of representatives, by Hon. John A. Shaw, of Bridge- 
water, afterward superintendent of public schools in New Orleans, will be found in the 
'Common School Journal." for August, 1S40, Vol. II. pp 225-46. Mr. Mann's own graphic 
account of the matter, will be found in an address, made by him, at the dedication of the new 
buil ling erected for the State Normal School, at Bridgewater, in 1946, and which we shall 
append to this memoir. 



£40 HORACE MANN. 

measured and ascertained — were without the substance or semblance 
of truth. These letters, in their newspaper as well as their pamphlet 
form, attracted much attention, were widely commented upon in. the 
religious as well as the secular press, and did much to disabuse the 
public mind of the prejudices which had been fostered against the 
board among many excellent people. The argument of these letters 
was again ably presented, in a more formal and elaborate manner, by 
Mr. Mann, in his twelfth annual report, and meets now with general, 
if not universal, acceptance. 

But the document which had at once the widest circulation, and 
involved the author in the most varied, voluminous, and prolonged 
controversy, was his Seventh Annual Report, giving the results of his 
observations in the schools of Europe, in the summer of 1843. The 
attacks made from various quarters, as to Mr. Mann's statement of 
facts, or his speculations, as to modes of instructing deaf-mutes, of 
managing juvenile delinquents, and methods of instruction and dis- 
cipline in public schools generally, and particularly in those of Prus- 
sia, with Mr. Mann's replies and explanations, did a vast amount of 
good, by attracting the attention of educated men, and of teachers, all 
over the country, to the condition of our own schools, both public and 
private, and to the adoption, very widely, of the methods described. 
The personal animosities which this controversy engendered, we trust, 
are allayed or forgotten ; and we have no disposition to revive or 
perpetuate them by any further notice, except to remark that, in its 
progress, this controversy absorbed much time, and occasioned much 
wear and tear of spirits — but did not diminish the amount or variety 
of Mr. Mann's official labors. We are not sure but a good, sharp 
controversy is necessary to get the largest amount of work out of all 
the faculties of a mind constituted like that .of Mr. Mann. 

In retiring from his post, as secretary of the Board of Education, 
in the autumn of 1848, Mr. Mann can justly claim that his labors, 
during the twelve years he held the office, had more than realized all 
the promises of good to the common schools which their friends 
ever made, to induce the legislature to establish the policy of state 
supervision. If we turn to the "Memorial of the Directors of the 
American Institute of Instruction"* praying for the appointment of a 
superintendent of common schools, drawn up by Mr. George B. Em- 
erson, and presented to the legislature of Massachusetts, in 1836, we 
find that, in every way in which it was claimed an officer might act 
for the good of the schools, Mr. Mann did act with wonderful effi- 
ciency, and the largest results. 

" We append this Memorial. 



HORACE MANN. 



641 



Of Mr. Mann's political career, this Journal is not the place to 
speak in detail. On the 23d of February, John Quincy Adams, who 
was the representative from the congressional district in which Mr. 
Mann resided, died in the United States House of Representatives, at 
Washington, and Mr. Mann had the great honor of being selected for 
two terms, by his constituents, as the most suitable person to succeed 
him. But great as was the urgency, and powerful as were the mo- 
tives which led Mr. Mann to accept the nomination, and, on his elec- 
tion, to enter again the arena of political life, we, in common with 
many other personal and educational friends, regretted then, and re- 
gret now, his decision. It took him from a field purely beneficent, in 
which he was more widely known, and more highly appreciated, than 
any man living, and where he was every day gaining the willing attention 
of a larger audience, from all creeds and parties in every part of the 
country. By throwing himself, with his usual earnestness, and uni- 
versally acknowledged ability, into the discussion of questions on 
which the country was already bitterly and widely divided, he cut 
himself off from the sympathy of a large portion of the people, even 
on questions which involve no party issues ; and he soon became im- 
mersed in personal controversy, which exhausts the energies of the 
best minds, without accomplishing large and permanent results in the 
way of beneficent legislation. Whoever wishes to exert a powerful 
and permanent influence in the great field of school and educational 
improvement, must be able to command the attention and sympathy 
of large portions of all the great political parties into which the 
country, and every section of the country, is divided and sub-divided. 
Whatever hopes Mr. Mann, or his friends, entertained, as to his ability 
to induce the general government to aid, directly or indirectly, the es- 
tablishment of an educational bureau, in connection with one of the 
departments at Washington, or with the Smithsonian Institution, 
were disappointed; and, after an experience of five years, during which 
time Mr. Mann was a candidate for the office of governor of Massa- 
chusetts, he returned again to the educational field, by accepting the 
presidency of Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio. 

Antioch College was established under the auspices, and by the pat- 
ronage, of a religious body, designated by themselves "Christians," be- 
cause the " disciples were first called Christians in Antioch." Mr. Mann, 
since his residence at Yellow Springs, has united himself in ecclesi- 
astical fellowship with this denomination, officiates for them on the 
Sabbath, and acts with them in the associations or conventions of 
their churches and congregations. In the administration and instruc- 
tion of the college, Mr. Mann claims to stand on an unsectarian, al- 
41 



(342 HORACE MANN. 

though christian, platform ; but this claim has not shielded him, or the 
institution, from the assaults of other denominations — not even from 
the sect, whose charity in founding the college was not broad enough 
to tolerate such teaching in ethics and morals only, as would satisfy 
all professed believers in the New Testament. 

The college was founded mainly on the "scholarship" principle — and 
as all the funds collected on this basis, and many thousand dollars more, 
were converted, not into a permanent fund to pay professors, and meet 
the annual expenses of the institution, but into buildings which yield 
no pecuniary income, it was soon ascertained that the larger the num- 
ber of students sent up on scholarship certificates, the sooner would 
come the utter bankruptcy of the enterprise. Hence it has come to 
pass that, between the assaults of sectarian enemies — enemies from 
within and without the "Christian'' church — and the importunate 
claims of creditors, Mr. Mann has been again involved in unprofitable 
controversy, and has been compelled to expend energies, needed to 
realize his large educational plans, in saving the college, as a literary 
institution, from the wreck of its financial policy. 

In the original organization, and through Mr. Mann's entire man- 
agement of Antioch College, thus far, he has aimed to secure three 
points, beyond the ordinary scope of American college discipline. 

1. To secure for the female sex equal opportunities of education 
with the male, and to extend those opportunities in the same studies, 
and classes, and by the same instructors, after the manner of many 
academic institutions in different parts of the country. 

2. To confer the college degrees only upon persons who have not 
only sustained the requisite literary and scientific character, but who, 
during their college course, have not been addicted to low and mean 
associations, nor branded with the stigma of any flagrant vice. 

3. To establish, within the walls of the college, a common law, 
which shall abrogate and banish the now recognized "Code of Honor" 
and exhibit the true relation of students and Faculty to be that of 
a large family, in which each member regards the honor of others, and 
of the whole, as sacredly as his own, and does not withhold from the 
Faculty any knowledge of the transactions of students, which the 
best good of each student, and of the college, require to be known. 

It is too early yet to speak of the success or failure of these plans, 
so far as they are new, and so far as they challenge comparison with 
older colleges. If they fail, it will not be from the want of ability, 
earnestness, and industry, on the part of Horace Mann. 

We should have mentioned that Mr. Mann received the degree of 
LL. D., from Harvard College, and from Brown University. 



HORACE MANN. (343 

It is not the aim of this Journal, in its record of the activity and 
services of living teachers, and promoters of education, to pronounce 
a final judgment on the character of the subject of each memoir, or 
the comparative value of the services rendered. In this instance we 
copy from the "American Phrenological Journal" the following analy- 
sis of Mr. Mann's character and life, as dictated from a cast of his 
head, by a manipulator in the office of Messrs. Fowler, in New York. 
As Mr. Mann is a believer in the philosophy of Phrenology, he can 
not object that the record which nature has written " to be read of 
all men" is transcribed for the edification of our readers. 

He has, naturally, great physical and mental activity, and a kind of wiryness 
of body without sufficient vital force to give the sustaining power necessary fir 
long-continued physical or mental action. His body is slim and slight, yet very 
well proportioned in its parts. His lungs are not large, the digestive system is 
moderately developed, and the muscles are proportioned to the lack of vitality ; 
hence he has riot a high order of physical power, nor sufficient vitality to sustain 
such power did he possess it. His chief care in regard to the body should be to 
combine with his rigid temperance in gustatory matters, an equal amount of tem- 
perance in regard to labor, exposure of body, and labor of mind. He has, doubt- 
less, already learned by experience, that physical activity and labor, within due 
bounds, are essential to clearness and strength of mind, as well as to health of 
body. He can not, at his age, by muscular labor in the open air, give hardness 
and great power to his physical system, yet he can in this way accumulate an ap- 
parent surplus of physical energy for a given mental effort that may tax the sys- 
tem to an unusual degree. 

His brain is large for his body, and although the head in circumference is only 
of full size, the hight of it is unusually great. The head may be denominated 
a " three-story one," which gives elevation to his character, and an aspiring dispo- 
sition. His power is moral and intellectual, rather than physical. We seldom 
find so large a brain in the tophead, in the region of the organs of reason, im- 
agination, sympathy, dignity, perseverance, wit, and moral sentiment, joined with 
so little basilar brain in the region of the animal and selfish organs. 

There are several peculiarities of development which deserve notice. The 
higher portion of the organ of combativeness is much larger than the lower ; the 
latter being small, giving a disinclination for physical combat and a lack of ani- 
mal courage, while the former being rather large, gives a tendency to intellectual 
conflict and moral courage. His destructiveness never leads to the infliction of 
unnecessary physical pain, — he dreads it, even upon an oyster, yet the anterior 
and upper part of the organ appears to be sharp and fully developed, which gives 
efficiency and severity of an intellectual and moral cast, as in criticism and re- 
views of opinions, character, and conduct, and imparts general thoroughness of 
disposition. 

Secretivencss is insufficient to produce more than ordinary policy and cunning, 
but the anterior part of the organ, which works with intellect and the elements 
of taste, imparts an elevated and intellectual policy, which acts in the adjustment 
of thoughts in such a way that they sting error without offending delicacy. His 
cautiousness is large in the anterior part, which leads to watchfulness, and that 
care and painstaking which plans for prospective dangers and emergencies, and 
guards against accidents, while the posterior part of the organ is not large enough 
to produce timidity ; hence he frequently appears more courageous and brave than 
the development of the organs of combativeness and destructiveness could inspire 
him to be. Having planned a course of action, he proceeds among dangers with 
a full consciousness of their position and character, and, to an observer, seems 
reckless of them ; as a pilot, who knows well where the rocks and bars lie about 
the channel, steers among them under full sail, to the terror of those who know 
there are rocks, but are not certain that the pilot knows their locality. 

His constructiveness is largely developed, especially in its upper portion, giving 



(544 HORACE MANN. 

planning talent and engineering ability, and greatly aids him in the construction 
of a subject and arrangement of thoughts, so as to produce the desired effect with 
the least friction. The lower, or tool-using part of the organ, is sufficiently de- 
veloped to give fair practical mechanical talent, but his power in respect to mech- 
anism is less as an executor than as a designer. Were he to devote himself to 
mechanism, his tendency would be upward toward the artistic, as in fine cutlery, 
mathematical instruments, and the like. 

Ideality is large, which gives not only good taste in respect to the beauties of 
nature and art, but acts with the moral sentiments and intellect to give polish, re- 
finement, and elevation to thought, sentiment, and expression. Whatever is rude, 
unbalanced, and imperfect, displeases him ; hence he seeks to refine and polish 
whatever he says and does. 

His sublimity is large, and, in conjunction with veneration and firmness, gives a 
passion for mountain scenery, and whatever is grand in the machinery of the uni- 
verse ; hence ho would pursue astronomy with passionate fondness as a field for 
the range of sentiment, as well as for mathematical study. 

If he has any one moral sentiment that overmasters all the rest, and in any 
sense warps his judgment, it is benevolence, and he will more frequently be called 
radical and infatuated when following its instincts than from any other cause. It 
stimulates his conscientiousness, fortifies bis pride and ambition, strengthens per- 
severance, arouses energy, invokes logic, and awakens wit to do its bidding and 
minister to its ends, and it may therefore be called the " team " of his mind, the 
central mental element of his nature. 

He has a remarkable development of firmness. That organ is both very large 
and sharp, indicating that it has been unusually stimulated to activity by circum- 
stances, as if his course of life had been a pioneering one, — breaking new ground, 
enforcing new modes of thought, and running counter to opposition, and the opin- 
ions and customs of ages. 

In respect to self-esteem, he has more of that portion of it that gives dignity 
and manliness than of that which imparts a dictatorial, domineering spirit. In 
early life he was inclined to defer to others, to shrink from responsibility, to 
feel that others could do more and better than he ; at the same time he had no 
lack of personal self-respect. That part of self-esteem that produces the dictating 
spirit, and the disposition to take responsibility, has been developed along with 
firmness, and doubtless from the same cause and course of life. 

His conscientiousness is very large, and particularly so in the outer part of it, 
joining cautiousness, which gives him moral circumspection, carefulness to do 
right, as well as to entertain just principles; hence he feels its binding force just 
as much in the details of life, in the practical duties of the day, as in respect to 
fundamental moral principles ; hence the law of expediency, as such, when brought 
in conflict with the law of right, becomes nugatory. 

His hope stretches forward prophetically, — he works for the future. He hopes 
for little in the present, except that which he, by dint of care and effort, can bring 
to pass; and he is less inclined to trust his business or interests in other hands 
than most men. He feels that he must be in his affairs personally, and have an 
eye over and a hand in the matter, or it will in some way go wrong. His hope 
inspires to effort, but not to expect success from luck, chance, or fortune, without 
labor and vigilance. He is not a man to lie quietly on the sunny side of present 
prosperity, expecting that " to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abund- 
ant," but to plow and sow, in the storm if need be ; yet he looks confidently for 
the harvest, however remote it may be. This is as true of him in morals as in 
business. 

He has not a high degree of credulity. That part of the organ of marvelous- 
ness or spirituality which most influences his character, is the inner or higher 
part of it, which gives spiritual or religious faith, reliance upon truth and first 
principles; and, although he is radical and progressive, he is by no means credu- 
lous. His mind is very critical, and rather skeptical, so much so that he takes 
little upon trust, and feels impelled to a thorough, rigid examination of whatever 
may be presented for his adoption ; nor is his large causality satisfied with any 
thing short of this, for it leads him to seek " a base line " for every thing in busi- 
ness, in propositions, or in morals, as well as in mathematics. 

Imitation and agreeableness are large, which give him the power of mental 



HORACE MANN. (545 

assimulation and harmony. He can reconcile apparently discordant things, or 
meet those who think differently from himself, without making manifest, in a high 
degree, the real difference that may exist between them, and he will so far con- 
form to an opponent as not to seem in opposition, until, by asking questions and 
quoting particulars, he can show good reasons for a counter belief thus, and lead 
his adversary into his own mode of thought. 

He has the organ called human nature large, which leads him instinctively to 
the study of mind, whether appertaining to men, to childhood, or to animals 
He sees at a glance the general drift of a man's intellect and character ; is strongly 
impressed with the truth of those inferences, and acts upon them, and generally 
with safety. If he takes a dislike to, or forms a favorable opinion of, a stranger 
at first sight, subsequent acquaintance generally corroborates the judgment thus 
formed ; hence, as a teacher, as a lawyer, or as a trader, he would, as it were, 
recognize a man's mental sphere, and know what to say to impress a sentiment 
or exert a given influence upon his mind. This faculty, joined with agreeable- 
ness or suavitiveness, enables him to make palatable, and accepted without hesi- 
tation, truths which, uttered harshly and in disregard of the tone of mind of the 
one addressed, would be at once rejected. 

Intellectually, he has some peculiarities. His reasoning organs are greatly 
superior to his perceptives and memory. He has a remarkably critical and logic- 
al cast of mind. He has the power to sift, dissect, and essay propositions and 
principles with great celerity and exactitude, while his large causality enables him 
to see the propriety and logical congruity of facts and propositions, and to present 
those views to others in a clear, concise, and forcible manner. In juxtaposition 
with causality he has very large mirthfulness, which gives him equal facility to 
recognize and show up whatever is incongruous, ridiculous, or witty, in such con- 
tract with truth and propriety as not only to amuse the mind of the hearer, but 
to brand error and immortalize truth. 

His faculties of memory and perception are doubtless active, appertaining as 
they do to such an active temperament, and because his seutiments and his rea- 
soning intellect urge them to effort, to furnish data on which the higher mental 
forces may act. He finds it necessary to trust to memoranda for facts and sta- 
tistics, but when thus obtained, he knows well how to work them up into argu- 
ments. His mind has much more to do with principles and elements than with 
facts, hence he is much more a philosopher than a historian. 

His language, instead of being copious, has this peculiar quality, viz., precision, 
nice distinction, and ready appreciation of synonyms; and, in speaking or writ- 
ing, his faculty of tune, in connection with language and ideality, leads him to 
seek euphony of expression, and a smooth, mellifluent style ; and in this combina- 
tion, with mirthfulness, ideality, and agreeableness added, consists his power of 
expressing stern, cutting truth, in a poetical and pleasing manner. 

It requires more effort for him than for most men to individualize his ideas, and 
to concentrate his powers on a given mental effort. He wants time and quiet, 
and a convenient opportunity. He can never bring out his full power of thought 
on a subject instantaneously. He must survey the whole ground, and converge 
his mind upon it logically ; hence, in off-hand, extemporaneous speaking, he rarely 
does himself or his subject full justice. 

In moral and social dispositions he is strongly developed, and bears the marks of 
special resemblance to his mother. He has large adhesiveness, which makes him 
eminently friendly. The upper part of philoprogenitiveness is large, which leads 
him to regard the moral and intellectual good of children much more than to look 
upon them as mere pets and playthings ; and he rarely plays with children with- 
out holding virtue, intelligence, and morality up to them as the goal of their hopes 
and efforts ; hence he seldom flatters them, or ministers to their animal gratifica- 
tion. His love for female society is strong, yet delicate, and he is much more in- 
terested in woman as relates to her refinement, and elevation, and purity of char- 
acter, than passional ly. 

The home, the family, and its elevated endearments, is the scene of his highest 
hopes and fondest attachments. 



REMARKS 

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL-HOUSE 
AT BEIDGEWATER. 

August 19, 1846. 



The completion of a new edifice to accommodate the State Normal 
School at Bridgewater was signalized by appropriate exercises, on the 19th 
of August, 1846. Addresses were made during the day by His Excellency, 
Governor Briggs, Hon. William G. Bates, of Westfield, Amasa Walker, Esq., 
of Brookfield, at the church, and in the new school-room. After these 
addresses the company partook of a collation in the Town Hall, on which 
occasion the health of the Secretary of the Board of Education was given 
by the president of the day, and received by the company with enthusiastic 
applause. To this sentiment Mr. Mann responded as follows, as reported 
in the Boston Mercantile Journal. 

Mr. President : Among all the lights and shadows that have ever crossed my 
path, this day's radiance is the brightest. Two years ago, I would have been 
willing to compromise for ten years' work, as hard as any I had ever performed, 
to have been insured that, at the end of that period, I should see what our eyes 
this day behold. We now witness the completion of a new and beautiful Nor- 
mal School-house for the State Normal School at Bridgewater. One fortnight 
from to-morrow, another house, as beautiful as this, is to be dedicated at West- 
field, for the State Normal School at that place. West Newton was already 
provided for by private munificence. Each Normal School then will occupy a 
house, neat, commodious, and well adapted to its wants; and the Principals of 
the schools will be relieved from the annoyance of keeping a Normal School in 
an «6-Normal house. 

I shall not even advert to the painful causes which have hastened this most 
desirable consummation, — since what was meant for evil has resulted in so much 
good. Let me, however, say to you, as the moral of this result, that it strengthens 
in my own mind what I have always felt ; and I hope it will strengthen, or cre- 
ate, in all your minds, a repugnance to that sickly and cowardly sentiment of the 
poet, Avhich made him long 

" For a lodge in some vast wilderness, 
Pome boundless contiguity of shade, 
Where rumor of oppression and deceit, 
Of unsuccessful or successful wars, 
Might never reach him more." 

There is oppression in the world which almost crushes the life out of humanity. 
There is deceit, which not only ensnares the unwary, but almost abolishes the 
security, and confidence, and delight, which rational and social beings ought to 
enjoy in their intercourse with each other. There are wars, and the question 
whether they are right or wrong tortures the good man a thousand times more 
than any successes or defeats of either belligerent. But the feeling winch springs 
up spontaneously in my mind, and which I hope springs up spontaneously in 
your minds, my friends, in view of the errors, and calamities, and iniquities of 
the race, is, not to flee from the world, but to remain in it ; not to hie away to 
forest solitudes or hermit cells, but to confront selfishness, and wickedness, and 
ignorance, at whatever personal peril, and to subdue and extirpate them, or to die 
in the attempt. Had it not been for a feeling like this among your friends, aud 
the friends of the sacred cause of education in which you have enlisted, you well 
know that the Normal Schools of Massachusetts would have been put down, aud 
that this day never would have shone to gladden our hearts and to reward our 



ME. MANN'S REMARKS AT BRIDGEWATER. 647 

toils and sacrifices. Let no man who knows nut what has been suffered, what 
has been borne and forborne, to bring to pass the present event, accuse me of an 
extravagance of joy. 

Mr. President, 1 consider tliis event as marking an era in the progress of edu- 
cation, — which, as we all know, is the progress of civilization, — on this westi 1:1 
continent and throughout the world. It is the completion of the first Normal 
School-house ever erected in Massachusetts, — in the Union, — in this hemisphere. 
It belongs to that class of events which may happen once, but are incapable of 
being repeated. 

I believe Normal Schools to be a new instrumentality in the advancement of 
the race. I believe that, without them, Free Schools themselves would bu 
shorn of their strength and their healing power, and would at length !>■ 
mere charity schools, and thus die out in fact and in form. Neither the art 1 f 
printing, nor the trial by jury, nor a free press, nor free suffrage, can long exist, 
to any beneficial and salutary purpose, without schools for the training of I 
ers; for, if the character and qualifications of teachers be allowed to degenerate, 
the Free Schools will become pauper schools, and the pauper schools will pro- 
duce pauper souls, and the free press will become a false and licentious press, 
and ignorant voters will become venal voters, and through the medium and 
guise of republican forms, an oligarchy of profligate and flagitious men will gov- 
ern the land; nay, the universal diffusion and ultimate triumph of all-glo 
tianity itself must await the time when knowledge shall be diffused a 
men through the instrumentality of good schools. Coiled up in this institution, 
as in a spring, there is a vigor whose uncoiling may wheel the spheres. 

But this occasion brings to mind the past history of these school , net less than 
it awakens our hopes and convinces our judgment respecting their future sua 

I hold, sir, in my hand, a paper, which contains the origin, the sour. ■ 

' ns, of the Normal Schools of Massachusetts. [Here 2vir. Mann read 
■ from the Hon. Edmund Dwight, dated March 10th, 1838, authorizing him. 
Mr. Mann, to say to tlie Legislature, that the sum of ten thousand dollars wou! I 
be given by an individual for the preparation of teachers of Comm 
provided the Legislature would give an equal sum. The reading v 
with great applause.] 

It will be observed, resumed Mi - . Mann, that this note refers to a conver; 
held on the evening previous to its date. The time, the spot, die words of that 
conversation can never be erased from my soul. This day, triumphant oi 
past, auspicious for the future, then rose to my sight. By the auroral U< 
hope, I saw company after company go forth from the bosom of these instil . 
like angel ministers, to spread abroad, over waste spiritual realms, the power of 
knowledge and the delights of virtue. Thank God, the enemies who have 
risen up to oppose and malign us, did not cast then hideous shadows aero 
beautiful scene. 

The proposition made to the Legislaturo was accepted, almost without oppo- 
sition, in both branches; and on the tliird day of July, 1839, the first Normal 
School, consisting of only three pupils, was opened at Lexington, under the care 
of a gentleman who now sits before me, — Mr. Cyrus Pierce, of Nantucket, — then 
of island, but now of continental fame. 

[This called forth great cheering, and Mr. Mann said he should sit down to give Mr. Pierce an 
opportunity to respond. Mr. Pierce arose under great embarrassment; starling a: the sound 1 
his name, and half doubting whether the eloquent Secretary had not intended to name 
other person. He soon recovered, however, ;md in a very happy manner extricated binis 
the " fix" in which the Secretary had placed him. He spoke of his children, the , 

first Normal School, and of the honorable competition which ought to exist between the 
schools; and to the surprise, as well as regret, of all who heard him, he spoke of being admon- 
ished by infirmities which he could not mistake, that it was time for him to retire from the pro- 
fession. The audience felt as it; for once in his lite, this excellent teacher had threatened to du 
wrong. He then told an amusing anecdote of a professor who retained his office too long, an I 

was toasted by the students in the words of Dr. Watts. — "The Rev. Dr. . Hush, my babi . 

lie still and slumber." And then he sat down amidst the sincere plaudits of the company, who 
seemed to think he was not '-so plaguy old" as he wished to appear.] 

I say, said Mr. Mann, on resuming, that, though the average number of Mr. 
Pierce's school is now from sixty to eighty ; and though this school, at the pres- 
ent term, consists of one hundred pupils, yet the tirst term of the first school 
opened with three pupils only. The truth is, though it may seem a paradox to 



£48 MR - MANN'S REMARKS AT BRIDGEWATER. 

say so, the Norman Schools had to come to prepare a way for themselves, and to 
show, by practical demonstration, what they were able to accomplish. Like 
Christianity itself, had they waited till the world at large called for them, or was 
ready to receive them, they would never have come. 

In September, 1839, two other Normal Schools Avere established : one at Barre, 
in the county of Worcester, since removed to Westfield, in the county of Hamp- 
den ; and the other at this place, whose only removal has been a constant mov- 
ing onward and upward, to higher and higher degrees of prosperity and use- 
fulness. 

In tracing down the history of these schools to the present time, I prefer to 
bring into view, rather the agencies that have helped, than the obstacles which 
have opposed them. 

I say, then, that I believe Massachusetts to have been the only State in the 
Union where Normal Schools could have been established ; or where, if estab- 
lished, they would have been allowed to continue. At the time they were 
established, five or six thousand teachers were annually engaged in our Common 
Schools ; and probably nearly as many more were, looking forward to the same 
occupation. These incumbents and expectants, together with their families and 
circles of relatives and acquaintances, would probably have constituted the 
greater portion of active influence on school affairs in the State ; and had they, 
as a body, yielded to the invidious appeals that were made to them by a few 
agents and emissaries of evil, they might have extinguished the Normal Schools, 
as a whirlwind puts out a taper. I honor the great body of Common School 
teachers in Massachusetts for the magnanimity they have displayed on this sub- 
ject. I know that many of them have said, almost in so many words, and, what 
is nobler, they have acted as they have said : — " We are conscious of our defi- 
ciencies ; we are grateful for any means that will supply them, — nay, we are 
ready to retire from our places when better teachers can be found to fill them. 
We derive, it is true, our daily bread from school-keeping, but it is better that 
our bodies should be pinched with hunger than that the souls of children should 
starve for want of mental nourishment ; and we should be unworthy of the husks 
which the swine do eat, if we could prefer our own emolument or comfort to the 
intellectual and moral culture of the rising generation. We give you our hand 
and our heart for the glorious work of improving the schools of Massachusetts, 
while we scorn the baseness of the men who would appeal to our love of gain, 
or of ease, to seduce us from the path of duty." This statement does no more 
than justice to the noble conduct of the great body of teachers in Massachusetts. 
To be sure, there always have been some who have opposed the Normal Schools, 
and who will, probably, continue to oppose them as long as they live, lest they 
themselves should be superseded by a class of competent teachers. These are 
they who would arrest education where it is ; because they cannot keep up with 
it, or overtake it in its onward progress. But the wheels of education are rolling 
on, and they who will not go with them must go under them. 

The Normal Schools were supposed by some to stand in an antagonistic rela- 
tion to academies and select schools ; and some teachers of academies and select 
schools have opposed them. They declare that they can make as good teachers 
as Normal Schools can. But, sir, academies and select schools have existed in 
this State, in great numbers, for more than half a century. A generation of 
school-teachers does not last, at the extent, more than three or four years ; so 
that a dozen generations of teachers have passed through our Public Schools 
within the last fifty years. Now, if the academies and high schools can supply 
an adequate number of school-teachers, why have they not done it ? We have 
waited half a century for them. Let them not complain of us, because we are 
unwilling to wait half a century more. Academies are good in their place ; 
colleges are good in their place. Both have done invaluable service to the cause 
of education. The standard of intelligence is vastly higher now than it would 
have been without their aid ; but they have not provided a sufficiency of com- 
petent teachers ; and if they perform their appropriate duties hereafter, as they 
have done heretofore, they cannot supply them ; and I cannot forbear, Mr. Presi- 
dent, to express my firm conviction, that if the work is to be left in their hands, 
we never can have a supply of competent teachers for our Common Schools, 
without a perpetual Pentecost of miraculous endowments. 



MR. MANN'S REMARKS AT BRIDGEWATER. (349 

But if any teacher of an academy had a right to be jealous of the Normal 
Schools, it was a gentleman now before me, who, at the time when the Bridge- 
water Normal School came into his town, and planted itself by the path which 
led to his door, and offered to teach gratuitously such of the young men and 
women attending his school, as had proposed to become teachers of Common 
Schools, instead of opposing it, acted with a high and magnanimous regard to 
the great interests of humanity. So far from opposing, he gave his voice, his 
vote, and his purse, for the establishment of the school, whose benefits, you, my 
young friends, have since enjoyed. (Great applause.) Don't applaud yet, said 
Mr. Maun, for I have better things to tell of him than this. In the winter ses- 
sion of the. Legislature of 1840, it is well known that a powerful attack was 
made, in the House of Representatives, upon the Board of Education, the Nor- 
mal Schools, and all the improvements which had then been commenced, and 
which have since produced such beneficent and abundant fruits. It was pro- 
posed to abolish the Board of Education, and to go back to the condition of things 
in 1837. It was proposed to abolish the. Normal Schools, and to throw back with 
indignity, into the hands of Mr. Dwight, the money he had given for their support. 

That attack combined all the elements of opposition which selfishness and 
intolerance bad created, — whether latent or patent. It availed itself of the 
argument of expense. It appealed invidiously to the pride of teachers. It 
menaced Prussian despotism as the natural consequence of imitating Prussia in 
preparing teachers for schools. It fomented political partisanship. It invoked 
religious bigotry. It united them all into one phalanx, animated by various 
motives, but intent upon a single object. The gentleman to whom I have re- 
ferred was then a member of the House of Representatives, and Chairman of the 
Committee on Education, and he, in company with Mr. Thomas A. Greene, of 
New Bedford, made a minority report, and during the debate which followed, 
he defended the Board of Education so ably, and vindicated the necessity of 
Normal Schools and other improvements so convincingly, that their adversaries 
were foiled, and these institutions were saved. The gentleman to whom I refer 
is the Hon. John A. Shaw, now Superintendent of schools in New Orleans. 

[Prolonged cheers; — and the pause made by Mr. Mann, afforded an opportunity lo .Mr. Shaw, 
in his modest and unpretending manner, to disclaim the active and efficient agency which he had 
had in rescuing the Normal Schools from destruction before they had had an opportunity to 
commend themselves to the public by their works; — hut all this only increased the animation of 
the company, who appeared never before in have had a chance to pay off any portion of their 
dihl of gratitude. After silence was restored, Mr. Shaw s.tid that every passing year enforced 
upon him the lesson of the importance and value of experience in school-keeping. Long as he 
had taught, he felt himself improved by the teachings of observation and practice; and he must 
therefore express his joy and gratitude at the establishment and the prosperity of the school at 
that place, whatever might he the personal consequences to himself.] 

Nor, continued Mr. Mann, is this the only instance of noble and generous con- 
duct which we are bound this day to acknowledge. I see before me a gentle- 
man who, though occupying a station in the educational world far above any of 
the calamities or the vicissitudes that can befall the Common Schools, — though, 
pecuniarily considered, it is a matter of entire indifference to him whether the 
Common Schools flourish or decline, — yet, from the beginning, and especially in 
the crisis to which I have just adverted, came to our rescue, and gave all his 
influence, as a citizen and as a teacher, to the promotion of our cause ; and whom 
those who may resort hither, from year to year, so long as this building shall 
stand, will have occasion to remember, not only with warm emotions of the 
heart, but, during the wintry season of the year, with warm sensations of the 
body also.* I refer to Mr. Geo. B. Emerson. 

[Mr. Emerson was now warmly cheered, until he rose, and in a heartfelt address of a few mo- 
ments, expressed his interest in the school, and in the cause of education, which he begged the 
young teachers not to consider as limited to this imperfect stage of our being.] 

These, said Mr. Mann, are some of the incidents of our early history. The late 
events which have resulted in the generous donations of individuals, and in the 
patronage of the Legislature, for the erection of this, and another edifice at West- 
field, as a residence and a home for the Normal Schools, — these events, I shall 

* Mr. Emerson bas furnished, at his own expense, the furnace by which the new school-house 
is to be warmed. 



65 J MR. MANN'S REMARKS AT BRIDCEWATER. 

consult my own feelings, and perhaps I may add, the dignity and forbearance 
■which belong to a day of triumph, in passing by without remark. 

[This part of the history, however, was not allowed to be lost. As soon as the Secretary had 
taken his seat, the Rev. Mr. Watei'Ston, who had been instrumental in getting up the subscrip- 
tion to erect the two school-houses, arose, and eloquently completed the history. He stated, in 
brief, that the idea of providing suitable buildings for the Normal Schools originated wish some 
thirty or fortyi friends of popular education, who, without distinction of sect or party, had met, in 
Boston, in the winter of 1844-5, to express their sympathy with Mr. Mann in the vexatious con- 
flict which he had so successfully maintained ; and who desired, in some suitable way, to express 
their approbation of his course in the conduct of the great and difficult work of reforming our 
Common Schools. At this meeting, it was at first proposed to bestow upon Mr. Mann some 
token evincive of the personal and public regard of its members; but, at a subsequent meeting, 
it was suggested that it would be far more grateful and acceptable to him to furnish some sub- 
stantial and efficient aid in carrying forward the great work in which he had engaged, and in 
removing those obstacles and hinderances both to his own success and to the progress of the 
cause, which nothing but an expenditure of money could effect. No way seemed so well 
adapted to this purpose as the placing of the Normal Schools upon a lirm and lasting basis, by 
furnishing them with suitable and permanent buildings; and the persons present thereupon 
pledged themselves to furnish $5000, and to ask the Legislature to furnish a like sum for this im- 
portant purpose. The grant was cheerfully made by the Legislature, whose good-will has since 
been further expressed by a liberal grant, to meet the expenses of those temporary Normal 
Schools, called Teachers' Institutes. Mr. Mann, who had not yet taken his seat, then continued 
as follows :] 

I have, my young friends, former and present pupils of the school, but a single 
word more to say to you on this occasion. It is a word of caution and admoni- 
tion. You have enjoyed, or are enjoying, advantages superior to most of those 
engaged in our Common Schools. Never pride yourselves upon these advan- 
tages. Think of them often, but always as motives to greater diligence and 
exertion, not as points of superiority. As you go forth, after having enjoyed the 
bounty of the State, you will probably be subjected to a rigid examination. 
Submit to it without complaint. More will sometimes be demanded of you than 
is reasonable. Bear it meekly, and exhaust your time and strength in perform- 
ing your duties, rather than in vindicating your rights. Be silent, even when 
you are misrepresented. Turn aside when opposed, rather than confront oppo- 
sition with resistance. Bear and forbear, not defending yourselves, so much as 
trusting to your works to defend you. Yet, in counseling you thus, I would not 
be understood to be a total non-resistant, — a perfectly passive, non-elastic sand- 
bag, in society ; but I would not have you resist until the blow be aimed, not so 
much at you, as, through you, at the sacred cause of human improvement, in 
which you are engaged, — a point at which forbearance would be allied to crime. 

To the young ladies who are here — teachers and those who are preparing 
themselves to become teachers, — I would say, that, if there be any human being 
whom I ever envied, it is they. As I have seen them go, day after day, and 
month after month, with inexhaustible cheerfulness and gentleness, to their ob- 
scure, unobserved, and I might almost say, unrequited labors, I have thought 
that I would rather fill their place, than be one in the proudest triumphal pro- 
cession that ever received the acclamations of a city, though I myself were the 
crowned victor of the ceremonies. May heaven forgive them for the only sin 
which, as I hope, they ever commit, — that of tempting me to break the com- 
mandment, by coveting the bUssfulness and purity of their quiet and secluded 
virtues. 



HORACE MANN. 651 

List of Publications by Horace Mann, LL. D. 

The Common School Journal. 1839—1848. 10 vols., royal octavo. 

Abstract of Massachusetts School Eeturns. 1839—1847. 

Annual Reports (Twelve,) as Secretary op the Board of Education, 
from 183S to 1849. 

Supplementary Report on School-houses. 1838. 

Massachusetts System of Common Schools; being an enlarged and re- 
vised edition of the Tenth Annual Report. 1849. pp. 212. 

Lectures on Education. 1845. pp. 338. 

An Oration, delivered before the Authorities of the City of Boston. 
July 4, 1842. pp. 86. 

A few Thoughts for a Young Man; a Lecture, delivered before the Boston 
Mercantile Library Association, on its Twenty-ninth Anniversary. 1850. pp. 
84 

A few Thoughts on the Powers of "Women. Two Lectures. 1853. pp. 
141. 

Dedication of Antioch College, and Inaugural Address of its Presi- 
dent. 1854. pp. 144. 

Baccalaureate, delivered at Antioch College. 1857. pp. 61. 

Demands of the Age on Colleges. Speech delivered before the Christian 
Convention Ohio. October 5, 1854. pp. 86. 



We give below the titles of the pamphlets which we have had bound 
together and lettered "Jftwira's Educational Controversies." 

The Common School Controversy ; consisting of three Letters of the Sec- 
retary of the Board of Education, in reply to charges preferred against the 
Board, with extracts from the daily press, in regard to the controversy. 56 ^ 

Seventh Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Educa- 
tion. (By Horace Mann.) January 1, 1844. pp. 188. 

Remarks on the Seventh Annual Report of the Hon. Horace Mann, Secretary 
of the Massachusetts Board of Education. By Thirty-one Boston Teachers. 

1844. pp. 144. 

Reply to the " Remarks " of Thirty-one Boston Schoolmasters, on the Seventh 
Annual Report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. By 
Horace Mann. 1844. pp. 176. 

Rejoinder to the "Reply" of the Hon. Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massa- 
chusetts Board of Education to the " Remarks " of the Association of Boston 
Masters, upon his Seventh Annual Report. 1845. By the "Thirty-one School- 
masters." pp. 55. 

Rejoinder to the Second Section of tlie "Reply." By "Wm. A. Shepard. March, 

1845. pp. 56. 

Rejoinder to the Third Section of the "Reply." By S. S. Greene. March, 1845. 
pp. 40. 

Rejoinder to the Fourth Section of the "Reply." By Joseph Hale. April, 1845. 
pp. 64. 



052 HORACE MANN. 

Answer to the "Rejoinder" of "Twenty-nine" Boston Schoolmasters, part of 
the " Thirty-one " who published " Remarks " on the Seventh Annual Report of 
the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. By Horace Mann. 
1845. pp. 124. 

Penitential Tears ; or a Cry from the Dust. By " the Thirty-one," prostrated 
and pulverized by the Hand of Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts 
Board of Education. 1845. pp. 59. 

"Penitential Tears! " By Massachusetts. 

Observations on a pamphlet, entitled " Remarks on the Seventh Annual Re- 
port of the Hon. Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Educa- 
tion." By G. B. Emerson, pp. 16. 

Mr. Bumstead's Defense of his School-books, in reply to Mr. S. S. Greene. July, 
1845. pp. 8. 

Report of the Special Committee of the Primary School Board, on a portion of 
the Remarks of the Grammar Masters. Boston: 1844. pp.13. 

Report of a Committee of the Association of Masters of the Boston Public 
Schools, on a letter from Dr. John Odin, in relation to a Report of the Special 
Committee of the Primary School Board. Boston: 1845. pp. 18. 

School Discipline. By Anti-Busby. 

The Schoolmasters' Review of Mr. Mann's Report. By Luther. 

Reports of the Annual Yisiting Committees, of the Public Schools 
of the City of Boston. 1845. pp. 168. 

Review of the Reports of the Annual Visiting Committees, of the Public Schools 
of the City of Boston, 1845. By Scholiast, pp. 58. 

The Scholiast Schooled. An Examination of the Review of the Reports of 
the Annual Visiting Committees of the Public Schools of the City of Boston, 
for 1845. by Scholiast. By A Bostonian. 1846. pp. 65. 

Address to the Citizens of Boston. By S. G. Howe, "William Brigham, J. L. T. 
Goolidge, and Theophilus Parsons. March, 1846. pp. 12. 

The Bible, the Rod, and Religion, in Common Schools. The Ark of God 
on a new cart : A Sermon, by the Rev. Matthew Hale Smith. A Review of the 
Sermon, by Wm. B. Powle, publisher of the Massachusetts Common School 
Journal. Strictures on the Sectarian Character of the Common School Journal, 
by a Member of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Correspondence be- 
tween the Hon. Horace Mann, Secretary of the Board of Education, and Rev. 
Matthew Hale Smith. Boston: 1847. pp.59. 

Sequel to the so-called Correspondence between the Rev. Matthew Hale Smith 
and Horace Mann, surreptitiously published by Mr. Smith; containing a letter 
from Mr. Mann, suppressed by Mr. Smith, with the reply therein promised. 
Boston: 184V. pp. 56. 

Reply to the Sequel of Hon. Horace Mann ; being a supplement to the Bible, 
the Rod, and Religion, in Common Schools. By Matthew Hale Smith. Second 
edition. Boston: 1847. pp. 36. 

Letter to the Rev. Matthew Hale Smith, in an answer to his "Reply " or "Sup- 
plement." By Horace Mann. Boston: 1847. pp.22. 

Horace Mann and Matthew Hale Smith. April 30, 1847. pp. 8. 



MEMORIAL 



OF THE 

DIRECTORS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INSTRUCTION. 



To the Honorable the Legislature 

of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

The directors of the American Institute of Instruction beg leave to present 
their memorial, praying them to consider the expediency of appointing, for a 
term of years, a superintendent of the common schools of the Commonwealth. 

And, in presenting this memorial, the directors of the Institute beg leave to 
state some of the circumstances and reasons which have led them to feel the 
importance and necessity of such an officer, and which have determined them to 
offer to the legislature the request which they now lay before them. 

Of their impression of the imm-asurable value of the free schools of the 
Commonwealth, as an instrument of good to its citizens, your memorialists hold 
it unnecessary to speak at large. They confidently believe that upon the impor- 
tance of an institution which, in its action, comes home to the mind and heart of 
every child of the Commonwea'th, which does, or may do, more than any other 
to bring out his powers, to furnish him with good knowledge, to form his charac- 
ter, to give him noble aims, and to fit him in all ways for his duties as a citizen 
and a man, and for his whole future existence, any statements they could make 
would alike fill far short of the truth, and of the convictions of the wise and 
patriotic citizens who represent the people of the state. They believe that in no 
way can so much be done to benefit the whole population of the Commonwealth, 
as by improving (he condition of the common schools. They believe, and have 
long believed, that in many respects these schools need improvement. 

One of the objects had in view in the formation of the American Institute of 
Instruct on, was to reach these schools, through their teachers. If these could be 
brought together, even once in a year, or once in a few years, it was confidently 
hop ■ 1 that they could not fail of receiving an useful impulse. And your memori- 
alists trust that some good has in this way been done. Their hopes have not 
been entirely disappointed, their exertions have not been altogether unavailing. 

A few, out of the great number of teachers in the Commonwealth, have 
annually met together, and stimulated and encouraged each other, and made 
report, and borne testimony of a gradual and partial improvement. 

They have annually reported much, however, of a different complexion. 
They have reported, with melancholy unanimity, and we fear that every member 
of the legislature, acquainted with any considerable portion of the schools, must 
confirm the truth of their report, that very many of the common schools, in all 
parts of the Commonwealth, have yet felt no impulse, have made no advance- 
ment, have undergone no change. The very schools which most need, and which 
should most feel, the fostering care of benevolent attention, those in every county, 
situated in the remote, and poor, and thinly-peopled districts, remain unimproved, 
and apparently unregarded. 

We believe that the buds of genius are scattered as bountifully in these remote 
districts as elsewhere; that on the rough hills, and among the sterile fields, the 
noblest of plants, the human soul, springs with as divine capacities, and, if kindly 
and skillfully nurtured, will expand with as large and vigorous a growth, as in any 
of the most favored region ; nay more, that the very absence of the softnesses and 
luxuries of life, will give an inward vigor and sturdiness, most favorable to the 
highest talents and the best virtues. But a kindly nurture they require. Good 
schools they must have. How shall these schools be reached? 

The Institute can not reach them, it can not visit them. We have not suffi- 
ciently exact information in regard to their condition, to enable us to communicate 
with them, in such manner as to be sure to benefit them. Their teachers can not 
visit us. They do not meet with our Institute, or with any institute or associa- 
tion, nor are they subject to any influence which shall awaken them to greater 
zeal, or give them better knowledge in regard to education. 



Q54 MEMORIAL ON SUPERINTENDENT OF COMMON SCHOOLS— 1836. 

They are so numerous and remote, that the whole time of one individual would 
be no more than sufficient to obtain a knowledge of their state and wants ; and, 
without this knowledge, nothing can be wisely suggested, or satisfactorily done to 
improve them. 

What we see ought to be done, what we want the knowledge and ability to do, 
we come to pray the legislature to cause to be done. 

We can not for a moment doubt that the legislature is entirely disposed to do 
whatever can be done for the common schools. We dare not impute to them the 
inconsistency of making a liberal provision for the development of the material 
resources of the state, in its mineral and vegetable treasures, and yet remaining 
indifferent to the infinitely greater treasures, the whole intellectual and moral 
resources of its future population ; we are not willing to believe that the state will 
do more to bring to light the marble and granite of its hills, than the genius of 
its children. 

There is a very general conviction that something more should be done for the 
common schools ; and we believe that a chief reason why so little has hitherto 
been done is, that the information essential to a wise action upon the subject 
has not been collected and presented in a strong light to the legislature and the 
public. 

We believe that an individual, competent to this work, and faithfully devoted to 
it, under the direction of the executive, or any other authority the legislature 
might see fit, in its wisdom, to appoint, would be able to collect information in 
regard to the schools, and lay it, in an annual report, before the legislature, 
which would enable them to act with complete knowledge of the whole subject. 

We, therefore, think that the condition of the schools demands the appoint- 
ment of the superintendent. 

And we beg leave further to state, particularly, some of the ways in which 
such an officer, if appointed, could act directly for the good of the schools. 

1. He could devise means for the improvement of the teachers. We hold it 
an evident and important truth, that no school can be essentially improved, but 
by the improvement of its teacher. All other things are, in comparison, of very 
little consequence. Children of the best parents, in the best constructed school- 
house, under the most favorable circumstances, will lose, and more than lose, their 
time, if given over to the management of an incompetent teacher. This im- 
provement is, therefore, at the bottom of every other. Now there are various 
ways in which a superintendent could minister to this. By calling conventions 
of teachers in the different counties, he would awaken an interest which could 
not fail of doing good. 

There are, we trust, no sections of the state, in which there are not to be 
found excellent schools, managed by skillful and abundantly capable teachers. 
But they are now isolated. They act little on each other, and still less on the 
numerous schools about them. The improvements that are made by individu- 
als, in arrangement, in discipline, in the choice of things to be taught, and in 
the modes of teaching, are not indeed lost, for they act on the immortal minds 
within the influence of him who makes them. But they are usually confined 
to his immediate sphere; they go not abroad, to stimulate and enlighten his 
fellow- workers in the same cause ; they are not recorded for the benefit of his 
successors; they cease with their author. If what is best in each, could be 
added to the common stock of all, all would become respectable; and such a 
communication, long continued, would at length render all, who were capable of 
it, excellent. But such a system can only be begun, and successfully continued, 
by the influence of some common friend. 

A superintendent, visiting all the schools, would find many instructors, of 
good capacities, failing for want of experience, and the knowledge of various 
methods. To such, how often would a few suggestions be of the greatest 
advantage. 

2. He could devise means for the formation of better teachers. It is well 
known that a large portion of the schools are taught by persons who have re- 
course to instruction for a temporary employment, in the intervals of other 
pursuits, or while in preparation for another calling, without especial taste or 
suitableness for the vocation. In some degree, it will probably be always so; 
it is to be hoped, in a far less degree hereafter than at present. If the schools 



MEMORIAL ON SUPERINTENDENT OF COMMON SCHOOLS— 1836. 



655 



of the Commonwealth are ever to be what they might be, it can only happen by 
the separation to the work of instruction of men of peculiar gifts, to be trained 
and prepared for it by a special course, as men are now prepared for all other 
professions and all other arts. On this subject, which we shall not trust our- 
selves to enlarge upon, the suggestions of one intimately acquainted with all 
the circumstances of the schools of the Commonwealth, would have peculiar 
value. 

3. He could furnish useful information upon the position, construction, and 
furniture of school-houses. This is a matter commonly referred to committees, 
who, however competent in other respects, have usually had little experience as 
to buildings of this sort, and few opportunities of seeing improved modes of struc- 
ture, and who would gladly obtain hints, to assist them in the proper discharge 
of their commission. How valuable to such a committee would be the advice 
and the portfolio of a man who had seen all the best school-houses, and had 
prepared plans of them, and was familiar with the inconveniences and advantages 
of the various models. 

4. He could recommend ways and means by which the schools may be en- 
couraged. Their prosperity will always depend, in a great measure, upon the 
attention given to them ; and nothing can be so fatal, as neglect and indifference. 
J>ut there is always danger, that direct encouragement to schools, by donations 
of money, shall make their friends overconfident in regard to them, and thus 
lead them to relax or draw off their attention. Great care must evidently be 
necessary, so to bestow the public bounty as to increase the interest taken in 
them, by those immediate friends on whose personal care they must still depend 
for every tiling most vital about them. It would seem prudent, in the prospect 
of having large sums annually to disburse for the furtherance of this dearest 
interest of the people, that an agent should be employed by the legislature, to 
enable them the better to judge whether the bounty of the state were or were not 
producing the good intended. 

5. He could reduce to shape and symmetry, the now disjointed materials of 
what might be a beautiful system. Much is said of our system of schools. But 
it is evident, there is little of system about them. They are of all grades of ex- 
cellence, and, from their absolute independence, of every variety of form, or 
fabric, that reason or fancy could frame. This would be of less consequence, if 
the same teachers usually remained, for a series of years, in the same schools. 
I hit, iu this respect, there is continual change, and a teacher, who has become 
accustomed to a certain order of things, as to discipline, arrangement, studies, 
and text-books, is very often condemned to waste his own time, and that of his 
pupils, by passing to another school, of an order, in all these particulars, entirely 
different. The want of some superintending and regulating authority is, we 
fear, grievously felt, in the greater number of the common schools. There is 
now no concert of action ; and, from the nature of the case, there can be none, 
without the direct or indirect interference of the legislature, through their 
authorized agent. 

6. He could collect, and present to the legislature, the experience of other 
states, and foreign countries, on subjects interesting to the common schools. The 
peculiar position of the American Republic, in reference to foreign nations, at 
once remote by its situation and near by its relations, has enabled it to avail 
itself of the improvements in the arts and sciences of all the world ; and, in a 
single half century, to place itself, in these respects, among the foremost of the 
earth. It is to be hoped that Massachusetts, at least, will not be less wary to 
take advantage of its situation, in reference to the essential interests of education. 

Several of the states of Germany have, with wise policy, put into operation 
systems for the complete education of all their inhabitants. The government of 
France is, at this moment, earnestly engaged in the same work. No doubt, it is 
from a conviction that the essential welfare of a state mainly depends on the edu- 
cation of its citizens, that the government of these nations, some of them almost 
unlimited monarchies, have adopted a course which would seem to belong espe- 
cially to republics. They have felt that, from the great onward movement that 
the common mind of Europe has made, in this long interval of peace, they could 
not hold their place in the family of nations, but by putting forth all their ener- 
gies ; and that those energies could only be brought out by the action of a system 



056 MEMORIAL ON SUPERINTENDENT OF COMMON SCHOOLS-1836. 

of national instruction in the common schools. Their experience is now 
before us. 

7. From a knowledge of the condition and wants of the agricultural popu- 
lation of the state, a superintendent of the common schools could do much 
toward enabling the legislature to determine the question, whether any thing can 
be done, better to adapt the instruction given in the common schools to those 
wants, or whether separate institutions for that purpose may, with advantage, be 
established. 

From a similar knowledge of the manufacturing population, he could suggest 
improvements, if any are to be made, in the schools specially intended for that 
population. 

Lastly, his knowledge of the whole system would enable him to recommend 
improvements, where practicable, of a general nature. Can further instruction 
in the useful aits be introduced into all the schools? Can a higher moral influ- 
ence be exercised ; thus to do something more to prevent the crimes which it 
now costs the state so much to punish? Can anything be done to instruct 
youth in their rights and duties as citizens ; thus adapting, more particularly to the 
wants of the future freemen, schools formed after the model of those intended 
for the subjects of a monarchy? 

Your memorialists trust that they have said enough, to show that the general 
charge of the oversight of the common schools of the Commonwealth would 
afford abundant employment to an individual of the most eminent abilities, 
whatever energy, activity, and devotion he might bring to the office. 

They believe that the schools, and, through them, the whole population of the 
state, would be benefited by the appointment of a competent superintendent ; and, 
moreover, that the good effected would be greater, in proportion, if he should 
act on a system to be extended through several years, than if the experiment 
were to be confined to a single year. 

To show that they do not give undue prominence to this office, they beg leave 
to refer to the example of Russ a, Prussia, France, and several others of the most 
enlightened governments of Europe, in which the charge of public instruction 
constitutes a separate department, equal, in rank and consequence, to any other 
whatever. All these states we have long looked upon as friends. Even if they 
were our enemies, it would still be wise in us to borrow from them an institution, 
which promised to be as useful among us as it showed itself among them. That 
proudest nation of antiquity, which extended its arms and its laws to the limits 
of the known world, never disdained to adopt, from a conquered nation, whatever 
custom or art it found superior to its own. 

Moved by these considerations, your memorialists respectfully pray you to con- 
sider the expediency of appointing, for a term of years, a superintendent of the 
common schools of the Commonwealth. 
» For the Directors of the American Institute of Instruction. 

George B. Emerson, 

S. R. Ham,, £ Committee. 

E. A. Andrews. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



BARNARD'S AMERICAN J0U1 







The American- Journal of Education, for 1859, 
Barnard, L L. D., will Ijp published quarterly ;. viz., on the 
December. M 021 -j 2 Q 688^ 

Each Number will contain at least 25C pages, and wili-on eirroernsnea wi 
rait, and with wood cuts illustrative of recent improvements in buildings, 
line, designed for educational purposes. 

Terms.— For a single copv, one year, (1859,) or for Numbers 16, 17, 18, and 19, 

KOR A SINGLE NUMBER, 1.25 

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Exchange Papers and Catalogues should be directed to Barnard's American Journal of Educa 
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All communications intended for, or relating to, the contents of the Journal, should be directed 
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Volumes I., If., III., IV., V., can be had for $2.50 per volume, in numbers, or for $3.00, bound 
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Postage.— To every subscriber, who will forward ($4.25,) four dollars and twenty-five cents, 
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NOTICES. 

The American Journal or Education, as edited by Hon. Henry Barnard, is established lo enter 
flu a range of discussion and investigation, much wider than that which examines simply the best 
methods of imparting instruction to children ; and it will be the highest authority which this country 
will have, as to systems tested abroad, or the improvements necessary at home.— North American Review. 
Barnard's American Journal op Education for March, (1856,) presents a great variety of import- 
ant articles, interesting not merely to professional instructors, but to all who take pleasure in studying 
great questions of social advancement and prosperity. The Editor's name is too well known, throughout 
this state, ami throughout the country, by his speeches, publications and incessant labors for the advance 
meni of public education, to warrant any words of comment as to his peculiar fitness for the manage- 
ment of such a periodical as that which he is publishing. He understands thoroughly the state "of 
instruction throughout the country, is equally well informed in reference to colleges and universities, 
common schools and academies, ''ragged" and industrial schools, and every other subject which "cduca- 
iion"'in its wii' si sense can comprehend; and, moreover, by an extensive personal acquaintance, not 
1 almost every country of Europe, he is able to collect the opinions and experience 

'■■iguished educators.— New Haven, {Conn.,) Palladium. 
i •! occupies a broader field than the local school journals Its scope is more 

Us <e that has hitherto been attempted even in England, and we have no hesita 

■ •>• before us (for March) a model specimen of what a first class educational 
d, {Mass.,) News-Letter. 

.* executed with the greatest fidelity.— Vermont Christian Messenger. 
of Education is distinguished for unusual ability, not only in the character 
it oy the skillfulnessof the editor's management in his own productions, and 
whole table of contents.— Wesleyan, Syracuse, N. Y. 
We, in the Souu., have long wanted such a periodical as this.— Memphis, (Term ,) Daily News. 
The first number of The American Journal of Education we received with unmingled pleasure, 
save in the regret that England has as yet nothing in the same field worthy of comparison with it.— 
Westminster Review/or January, 1856. 

Seldom have we welcomed with more cordial pleasure a new publication. Aside from his long expe 
rience, his intuitive perceptions of the wants of the age in this regard, the Editor always seemed to us to 
possess a "gift" in the promotion of the great object in which he has labored so faithfully and so success 
fully. — Knickerbocker. 

This is a work which richly deserves a world-wide circulation.— The English Journal of Education 
It is the most comprehensive and instructive specimen of a periodical on the subject which we have 
ever seen.— St. Louis, Western Watchman. 

Barnard's Journal of Education, it may be very, justly said, marks an era in this kind of literature 
Previous to this, we have not had our educational review or quarterly. We have had no work to 
which we could turn-for the able papers and lectures of the times, written upon this subject ; no repository 
.>! general educational intelligence and statistics ; no regular contributions from some loyal master-spirit, 
indited with the zeal attending a congenial pursuit, and evincing sound and discriminating views, based 
upon experience. — Providence Post. 

This magazine, devoted to the cause of education, in its highest and most complete significance, in 
Hlited and published by Henry Barnard, Hartford, Conn., and, apart from the great ability and intelli 
geuce of its accomplished editor, lays under tribute many of the richest and profoundest intellects of the 
age. There is no educational periodical in this country, and there never has been one, to eqval or 
approach it in point of philosophic vigor and fullness.— Louisville, (A't/.,) Journal. 

It is decidedly, and in every respect, the best educational journal ever published in the United States. 
Every man interested in the educational progress of the country should have it.— Springfield, (Mass.,) 



only in this lai> 
of a great var' 

Mr. Bar.- 
uomprehei'"' . 

tion in pro in 
periodical si i 

Every thin? 

The f :•;•■• 
of the a. . 
the arraii;. 



**^*blican 



\ddivs* at -113 Broadway, New York. 



F. C. Brownri.l, 



